Ok, tiny meaningless detail, but I liked it better in earlier MK's:

So I played some MK7 and realized that CPU drivers don't actually finish the race, but their position is fixed as soon as you finish. Let's say you hit one of them right before the finish line... on the map you see other CPU's overtake him, but the ranking doesn't update anymore. And their race times are clearly made up. Bummer.

I think they changed this after Double Dash. In DD the CPU drivers would achieve realistic race times, based on how their race went. If you were half a lap ahead, their race time would actually be 30 seconds worse than yours. Also, occasionally, one of them would go dumb: I once bumped one of them off the road, and he kept falling off... he finished 14 minutes later, according to the table of results :D Too bad I couldn't watch that.

Not sure what it's like in MK8, but in MKWii it was changed already. Guess they thought noone cares, so they'd rather save the CPU cycles. 

They finish in whatever place they're currently in as you cross the finish line. It's not that they thought no one would care, it's that no one should care!

Yep, they just scrapped everything for MK8. No race times at all. Just boring positions.

They change it in MK 7, what is funny is that in the last race if you need to end in first place to win the CPU gets a exaggerate boost

The CPU's positions have been fixed as soon as you finish the race in almost every single Mario Kart entry, including Mario Kart 64 and Double Dash. Only difference is that they removed the display of their estimated times. Times that no one should care about since the CPU is rubber-banding anyway.

Hmm no I don't think that's true. In DD their times were realistic, based on the positions on the map. Felt like they actually had the remaining CPU drivers battle it out, just decoupled from realtime cause no graphics output had to be rendered.

Also, what exactly do we mean when we say rubberbanding? I feel like everybody is using it to describe something different:

- item distribution (strong items for the bad drivers, poor ones for the fast drivers)? 

- the fact that every MK game assigns some CPU drivers as main opponents to the player?

- actual BS, like a CPU speeding and getting items as needed?

The latter was only true in MK SNES, MK64 and MK:SC. As far as I recall. In newer games I never thought the CPU cheated. Sure, CPU driving can be unrealistically perfect, but as long as it's consistent and in line with the specs of the character / kart combination, it's fine. IMO the rule of thumb is: If what the CPU kart does is possible for a human driver, it's not rubberbanding. 

Yeah we were kind of bummed by the missing race times, not cos we give a crap about CPU players, but sometimes you have a very tight finish and that kind of info makes it more fun to show how close it really was.

Then I challenge you to show me a race where the positions in Double Dash are different from how they were when then player crossed the finish line. Because after 10 years of playing the game I have never seen that happen.

When I talk about rubberbanding I refer to how the game makes sure that the player never has a convincing lead over the CPU, while the CPU becomes slower if the player underperforms. Both of which have been the case in every Mario Kart release. Mario Kart 7 and 8 are two very apparent examples of this, surpassed only by Mario Kart 64.

Not sure about slowing down for a slow player, but I've had some pretty sizable breakaways in MK8. And achieved some enourmous ones in MK Wii. I wouldn't be surprised to find some dynamic difficulty in the game, but "never a convincing lead" just hasn't been my experience.

Of course, it's hard to tell how exactly how big the leads are in MK8, since there are no race times.

Just look at the map!