I assume you're talking about the turtle race in the level that winds around a precipitous mountain slope, the level where wind picks you up at some places. It's been something like ten years since I played it, so I can't recall the names, but I played the hell out of the game back when, doing my own time trials and such.

If that's the one, my strategy was always to go the other direction, since the level is a big circle. Rather than following the turtle, I would wall-jump up to the top left from the starting area and then run the level backward from there, down to the turtle's race flag. I didn't always beat him, but I had more consistent success than I did running it the normal route where you have to deal with those wind gusts.