The all-new Angry Birds Racing is an interesting new addition to the popular franchise, revolving around racing rather than launching birds to destroy buildings. However, while this game is meant to provide a more casual experience, it’s actually quite difficult to master its racing mechanics. For this reason, we wanted to share this beginner’s guide where you’ll find a few useful tips and tricks to keep in mind if you want to win all your races in this game.

Launch Your Bird Correctly

The very first thing you’ll do before careening down the stage and into the race is actually launching your bird. Many fans of the series will recognize this launching mechanism as the iconic slingshot used to throw birds into buildings in the other mainline Angry Birds games. This time around, however, the slingshot is there to launch your bird into the race, while also giving you the chance to get a significant speed boost from the very beginning.

The Best Angry Birds Racing Tips and Tricks to Win All Your Races

To get the most out of your slingshot launch, you should aim in an arc that will let your bird fly a bit into the distance, but not so much since you lose some speed if you’re in the air for too long. On the flipside, you don’t want to aim directly at the ground ahead since you’ll lose out on the significant speed boost that you get from the first few moments that you’re in the air.

One last thing about the initial launch is that you should NEVER release it before the “GO” signal appears, otherwise you will lose ALL your momentum and will launch automatically a couple of seconds behind everyone else. If this happens, there’s a good chance that you won’t catch up at all.

Jumping and Flipping

While a good slingshot launch can help you get a good start in any race, the best way to actually propel yourself forward and win the race is by gaining speed boosts, which are represented by the bar on top of the screen. Moreover, the best way to actually gain these boosts is by jumping and performing flips. In fact, for each flip that you do—and land successfully—you’ll fill up a segment of the boost bar and gain a speed boost that diminishes slowly over time, or that is lost whenever you land another trick incorrectly.

The Best Angry Birds Racing Tips and Tricks to Win All Your Races

You can jump at any time simply by tapping on the screen, or if you’re playing Angry Birds Racing on PC with BlueStacks, by tapping the Spacebar. Moreover, by holding down the button, your bird will slowly do a flip which, if landed correctly, will result in the aforementioned speed boost. However, make sure to land ONLY on your feet, and not on your sides or on your head. Otherwise, your jump will fail and you’ll lose speed instead of gaining it.

The Best Angry Birds Racing Tips and Tricks to Win All Your Races

A good tip to keep in mind when trying to flip is to time your jumps correctly so that you’re slightly ahead of the elevation you’re jumping off and gain a lot of forward momentum along with the vertical leap, allowing you to not only do your flip, but also cover a lot of distance while in the air. Conversely, jumping too early might result in your bird climbing too high while also losing horizontal speed.

Gaining and Using Speed Boosts

Another way to increase your speed during races is simply by collecting speed boosts, which are represented by the little rocket icons that you’ll find across the stages. When you touch these symbols, you’ll gain a boost charge that you can use at any moment by tapping on the icon on the bottom right of your screen. Alternatively, if you’re playing on PC with our setup, you can boost by pressing the Shift key.

The Best Angry Birds Racing Tips and Tricks to Win All Your Races

It’s important to keep in mind that, when you’re in the middle of a boost, you won’t be able to jump. In this sense, try to use it only when you’re in a straight line and you won’t be needing to jump, otherwise the boost might do more harm than good.

The Key To Victory Is In Upgrading Your Birds

Despite how important your skills at racings are, you’ll always be significantly limited by the bird you’re using. In other words, no matter how good you are at racing and jumping, you won’t be winning races if you don’t upgrade your birds.

The Best Angry Birds Racing Tips and Tricks to Win All Your Races

Each bird has their own base stats, which can also be upgraded through the “Birds” menu, by spending coins on each of these stats. These parameters are upgraded in increments, with each of them requiring multiple gold investments to get maxed out. However, these upgrades are more than worth it as they will give you the edge that you need to win all your races.

Use the Best Birds at Your Disposal

Nevertheless, even when fully upgraded, the potential of your bird will vary dramatically, with some of them being better than others at certain aspects. For this reason, you should always use the best birds for the situation at hand. For instance, if the stage you’ll be running has lots of jumps, you would benefit greatly from using a bird with a high “Flip” stat, in order to score tons of speed boosts.

While you begin with only Red in your roster, you can purchase other birds by using the feathers that you get from finishing races. Moreover, as you climb the leaderboards and gain access to other leagues, you’ll also unlock new birds for purchasing.

The Best Angry Birds Racing Tips and Tricks to Win All Your Races

And that’s all for our beginner tips and tricks for Angry Birds Racing. Keep in mind that all this info is irrelevant if you’re not playing with the best tools at your disposal. For this reason, we strongly recommend downloading and installing Angry Birds Racing on PC with BlueStacks, as you’ll get the absolute best graphics, performance, and controls by playing on our Android app player.