Uma Racing Styles

There are four different styles in the game. These mostly dictate what parts of the race your uma tries the hardest in. Here’s a quick overview of their performance in each part:

Style	Opening Leg ■□□□□□	Middle Leg □■■■□□	Final Leg □□□□■■
Front Runner	★★★★☆	★★★☆☆	★★☆☆☆
Pace Chaser	★★★☆☆	★★★★☆	★★★☆☆
Late Surger	★★☆☆☆	★★★★☆	★★★★★
End Closer	★☆☆☆☆	★★★★★	★★★★★

For exact numbers, see the Phase Multipliers section below.

During the first half of the race, the umas participate in a dark ritual known as “Position Keep.” Each style has a position they want to maintain relative to the furthest-ahead Front Runner. If they fall out of that position, they’ll speed up to return to it (Pace Up mode), and if they get too far ahead, they’ll slow down to return to it. (Pace Down mode) For the nitty gritty details, see the mechanics doc. The numbers are in meters, but the ones lower than -3 will scale based on the track’s length.

Since the styles all base their position off the 1st uma, the better the uma in 1st is, the faster everyone else will run, dictating the pace. The better they are, the less likely Pace Down is, and the more Stamina is needed to finish the race. There are two exceptions:

• No Front Runner in the race. In this case, the Pace Chaser who takes 1st will ignore Position Keep and start acting like a Front Runner, with everyone else basing their positions off them. If there are no Pace Chasers too, then a Late Surger, etc. They’ll use their normal multipliers, so when there’s no Front Runner in the race, Pace Chasers become very scary.
• A single terrible Front Runner. In this case, say the Front Runner is Urara on a Turf track. She’ll never be able to keep up with the other umas, but since she’s technically the first Front Runner, everyone will still try to base their positions off her, leading to everyone remaining in Pace Down mode until the halfway point in the race. This was eventually patched on JP after a couple years, but it can reduce the stamina requirements by a few hundred if you gamble on there being no Front Runners in the race.

If this is hard to imagine, I made a quick video showing how it works, with the most cutting edge graphics available: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=co09NS3BklI