At the moment I'm favouring Luigi in the Rob LGS (not the segway thing) and it's helped me finally win on 150cc and open the mirror mode.

Any other preferences?

which version?

in the snes version it made a great fifference who you chose...........i found mario / luigi / toad.............and that small pink one??
princess peach was ok too if a bit delicate

in the n64 / gamecube versions it dont really matter who you choose, even bowser and donkey kong can win quite easily

DS of course :)

Koopa and Toad were great for the Snes version. Still got great acceleration but no speed.

As for Bowser/DK I usually saved them for battle mode. Watching Bowser's face on the bottom screen as he raced towards my brother's Luigi was priceless. It used to make me roar along with him, it was so delightful.

Bowser is always great so long as you *never* slow down. If you do it's so hard to catch up, I think you need a racer with decent acceleration and speed then battle to keep him in 1st place. Luigi is better at this than Mario imho.

Waluigi has good all round abilities and I completed the game with him.

I personally prefer Yoshi, with the go-kart rather than the egg.