These are the recommended minecraft settings:
-Clouds off
-Render distance minimum 6 chunks
-All particles
-Use the Mario Kart Ice Resourcepack
-Music off
You can change very many settings, that can change the game dramatically.
Shows your current speed in your XP bar (blocks per second).
Displays player kills in chat.
Shows an very cool animation above your head, when you collect an item.
When a player finished a race, a countdown to the end of the race will be displayed. You can choose if the countdown gets displayed in chat or in the title.
Displays the collected items from every player in chat.
Every item in your inventory gets deletet, if you die.
Every player gets an new head.
Makes players that are not sitting in a boat unable to move.
Deletes boats with no players inside, when no player is nearby them.
Turns Music on or off.
When you turn on this option, than players with no boat will be able to pickup item boxes.
Click on "Standart settings", if you want to play with the default options.
Click on "Activate or deactivate items" when you want to choose which items should be in the game and which not. Switch the levers to deactivate or activate items. For example you could turn all off and see what happens ;)
(Default: all items are activated)