Death race icon.
A death race is a common type of combat racing event featured in Jak X: Combat Racing. It is one of the crowd's favorite events[1] and the most watched event in the world.[2] The goal is to destroy as many drones as possible before time (invariably three minutes) runs out. Required scores can reach in the hundreds. Drones will appear on the track in front of you and generally keep up to your speed, though they can be overtaken by boosting, with which it is possible to bump into them to destroy them. Take outs by either bumping into a car or using the submachine gun will net the same number of points as if when you would use a yellow weapon. By completing a lap you can double your score intake, which is often necessary to even reach the gold goal.
The PlayStation 4 version has a trophy named "Road Rage". Reaching a 100 kills in an Adventure mode death race event will reward you with a bronze trophy.
High speed and a lot of turbo are the only requirements. You will need both to finish the lap earlier and to keep up with the dummy cars. A full dark eco meter can tremendously increase your kill potential, though damage wise it does not help a lot due to the drones' paper armor. If your speed is high enough you might want to try bumping into the targets instead, sometimes this can be used to faster rack a high score. Notably, destroying a car by ramming into it will net you a full turbo meter.
A death race in action.
Aside from gaining points by destroying cars, a very valuable source of points is to create a combo. A combo starts as soon as a second consecutive drone is destroyed, with less than a second or so in between. The combo is then set to two and will increase with each subsequent kill. If no kills are made a second after the last, the combo ends and the combo points are added to your points total. Combo points also multiply based on your current lap.
Aside from the default submachine gun, tracking missiles, Vulcan Fury, and grenade launcher pick-ups are also available. The grenade launcher can take out multiple drones at a time when they are located close by you, otherwise it is often fallible to being inaccurate. The Vulcan Fury is useful for tearing through many drones along a straight path, although it can be an issue when approaching sharp corners. The tracking missiles are superior to both; while they can only take out two to four drones at a time, they are great for building up combos and have a longer range and greater accuracy compared to the other weapons - the dark eco version especially, as it can take out four to eight drones at a time.