The race itself is much worse than before and you really need a top class chocobo (and feed it well) to compete, because they just buffed the not so brutal items and skills and kept the old ones.

The NPC don't care about this, doesn't matter if you slow, enrage or drain their chocobos, they are seven anyway and have all much more stamina (and speed) than you.

Must be pretty discouraging for new racers or those who don't got a near perfect chocobo. But well, at least some more MGP and XP (as long as you don't get crushed to 8th place - does not happen to me very ofter maybe 1-2% of races, if harder race is chosen, but my chocobo is a 3 4 4 4 4 chocobo, partly fed with grade 2 food).

Don't really get, why they buffed some things, like slow to 10 secs (well, at least not crushing), Silence and Shock even more or this insane Stamina Drain buff for Bachuus (see post above). It seems like this should compensate other skill buffs, like 15% less stamina drain or 6/9/12% stamina regain and so on, but really: now you NEED those to have a chance.