Comment by SrslyJosh

Couple points:

1. Skill absolutely matters, more than the kart, etc. that you pick. Watch some expert players on YouTube playing with weird builds and you'll see that they are still able to do well even when playing with significant disadvantages.

2. In practice, you don't really need to know the value of the hidden mini-turbo stat because higher acceleration == higher mini turbo. For 99% of players, acceleration can just be used as a proxy for mini-turbo.