Enough with the Mandatory Time Trials in Racing

Racing games are great fun but one of my biggest pet peeves with them is when they have some sort of time trials, or events where you're going through the track alone against the clock, that is necessary to complete in order to progress through the campaign.

I'm not against time trials events I just don't want them to be mandatory for campaigns as it inflates the time it takes to complete without actually adding much in terms of overall content. I vividly remember Need For Speed Hot Pursuit (2010) being notorious for this as every car you unlocked had some sort of time trial event attached to it as well as additional time trial events for new tracks. Sure, it took people 20-30 hours to complete the campaign but that wasn't because the game had 20-30 hours worth of original racing events.

Most recently, Hot Wheels Unleashed seems to have taken the time trials event to some extremes. Every single tracks has a time trials event attached to it which is a frustration to me every time  I see that little icon on the world map.

Time trial events are, in a way, what the collectibles gathering grind are for open world games - it's just a way to add more hours to a game without actually adding additional, varied, content.

Stop that!