You steer left or right with the pad, and you can adjust the forwards and backwards motion with the pad as well. At times your front wheel wants to kick up, so a quick push up on the stick pops the nose back down. While there are no freestyle modes, the game features a variety of special tricks. Tricks are employed with various permutations of the circle and R2 buttons and the control stick. The tricks serve no purpose except to possibly cause a crash.
Menus are simple, and vehicle options are explained in the setup menu before the race.
Each category utilizes more tracks, and to advance to the next category, you must come in first. To make it more difficult, there is no saving to the memory card during a championship season. With laps taking on the order of a minute, you are in for around 30 minutes of racing before you can access the memory card. This is both good and bad. The good is that you can't cheat and opt out of a bad race.