A timer being shown during the race would help gauge when and where tracks elements be, but just showing the final time at the end of the race doesn't do much, but I guess there wasn't really a reason to remove it either.

didnt even realize its gone (or that prior games had that) and I play Mario Kart since SNES

The only place where I noticed it was always time trial so it obviously has no value to me. I mean what advantage do I have for knowing how I raced VS npcs/other players? Its fundamentaly different from racing alone so why even bother "practicing" to beat a time with otehrs when I will then end up playing time trial anyway?

That is not true at all. Lap times and overall times are standard for literally every other respected racing game, arcade or sim. I think I heard they are adding it with the 200CC update though right?

I didn't know that this feature was removed, or that it even existed till right now.

I forgot it existed until this thread.

I really don't know. Hopefully they patch it in eventually, because it's a pointless thing to omit.

They would show that the tracks are actually shorter than the average Mario Kart race (they time at around 2 minutes each when the average before would be 2:30ish)

I never noticed there wasn't a timer in MK8 :o

If it was useless, then why did they have it in so many previous MK games?  Are you saying Nintendo often includes useless aspects to their games?

A big beef of mine with this game. I hate not being able to see how close a race was in terms of time at the end.