The Sparrow Racing League is no place for amateurs, you’ll need to bring your A game if you want to have any chance of knocking out a victory, or just making it out alive. Sparrows take a lot of finesse to control properly, but there are a few tricks you can use to get the most out of your bird, and hopefully nudge yourself ahead in the standings.

Hitting Gates

By far one of the most important things in Sparrow Racing is making sure you hit as many gates as you can. Gates will give you a speed boost that can be maintained so long as you don’t miss any gates. Miss a gate and your top speed will be reduced slightly.

The size of the gates will also change depending on what your place in the pack is. A player in 4th place will have a larger gate that’s easier to hit than a player in 1st place who has very small gates that take pin point precision to hit every time.

If you fall behind don’t get discouraged, just keep hitting your gates and chances are the front runners will miss one, allowing you to swoop right back into the running.

If you’re leading the pack, you’ve got to make sure you hit all those gates. The Sparrow Racing League is an unforgiving place, and even one missed gate can spell disaster for a player even if they’ve been leading the entire race.

That being said, there are certain gates that aren’t are too far out of the way to be worth getting. If it takes less time to cut a corner than grab a gate, then forgo the gate and cut the corner.

Strafing and Bumping

Your strafe buttons (bumpers) finally have a purpose in the Sparrow Racing League. Strafing side to side is very useful when you want to quickly avoid an obstacle, or make a move around another racer to overtake them. It can also be great for smashing into other sparrows, sending them careening off a cliff or into a rock wall.

There are no weapons in the racing league so you’ve got to turn your sparrow into one. You can nudge enemies with your strafe ability into walls, off cliffs or into other racers, where their destructible sparrows will hopefully be destroyed.

If another player is trying to run you off the road, try to time a brake or a boost just when they come in for the hit. Hopefully they’ll fly straight into the object/ cliff they were trying to send you into.

Players who’s sparrow blows up will be respawned a short distance behind the pack. It’s very tough to make it back to the front after restarting like this, so do your best to avoid sparrow damage.

Learn the Maps

There are only two maps in the regular race rotations, so there’s no excuse for not knowing their layout and every twist and turn. Just like a crucible team death math, map awareness is everything. Is there a straightaway after this bend that you can make your move on? Is there a cliff or rock coming up that I can ram my opponent into?

Consider playing a couple throwaway games on each map to drive slowly and memorise the ins and outs. A player who knows the intricacies of a race track will always outperform those who don’t take the time to do the same.

SLR Bounties

You didn’t think Sparrow Racing League would get away without having any bounties did you? Amanda Holliday hands out SLR bounties that can be completed for increased SLR reputation. That reputation then increases your rank. The higher your rank, the better your loot drops at the end of races will be, so it’s definitely worth grabbing any open bounties before you head out onto the track.


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Last Updated: Mar 21, 2016

About The Author

A man of many hats, Greg divides his precious gaming time between competitive games like League of Legends and Dota 2 and Action/ Adventure Games like GTA, and Destiny. At Ten Ton Hammer he specializes in making guides for new and veteran players alike.

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