1. Team modes were ingame. They will eventually return.
2. That'd be an interesting gamemode to see. Would probably need work.
3. Not sure how implementable that'd be.
The 2nd suggestion, "pass the bomb" mode should work like "Catch the Flag", but with a little differences:
In the beginning, players start near each other (star/ring formation), bomb is drawn (assigned) randomly to one of the players. In the car's roof should appear a device (red ball or something visible (like the flag in CTF) so anyone can see it clearly).
The bomb has a timer: 30, 35, 40, 50 or 60 sec (or less) previously determined is room settings.
When a player hits another player, the bomb is passed, but the timer isn't reseted (or maybe reseted, is up to you, that parameter should be a setting to define previously in room settings).
If timer is reseted gives to players more time to decide strategy. If not, the game is more competitive (and funnier, I think).
Every player can see/know the bomb timer on his HUD.
If bomb explodes before player can pass it to other, the car suffers a jump (like the gate camping effect in CTF) and a X sec penalty (car stays unmoveable, like in CTF when cars loses flag by recovering process made by player, not by rolling over).
After the bomb explosion, bomb is assigned randomly to other player (meanwhile, the "exploded" player is suffering his penalty, so he is out of that assignment/draw). Or bomb could be assigned to the farest or nearest player (distance related to the exploded bomb), another parameter to define previously in room settings. (Actually in CTF, the distance from each player to the flag already is accounted (is shown in the HUD)).
So, the game continues as the next player with the bomb tries to pass it to other, except to the previous exploded player, which car is unmouveable for X sec, so in that way he is immune (ghost mode) for some Y secs in order to start moving and gain some speed to escape from bomb, (note to this disadvantage could be exploited by the actual bomb car, who is looking for an easy "prey" to pass the bomb: the last car exploded; to prevent this happens, Y sec in ghost mode to the exploded player (after explosion) are a need).
The punctuation system should be similar to CTF and Drift modes.
The player with more time with the bomb (bomb run), without suffering the explosion should earn more points.
If the player explodes, he loses the points of his recent "running bomb" (recent time period in which he had the bomb), like the actual drift mode: while drifting if car hits some obstacle, or other car, drift moment accumulated points are lost).
So, the game mode isn't always escaping from the bomb. Is searching the bomb when bomb timer is huge and escaping from it (or passing it) when timer is little.
The last 10 secs "bomb run" before explosion should give more points to player who did that "bomb run" (without suffering explosion, of course).
Running/driving near the bomb (without having the bomb) should give more points to players than driving far to it, like the CTF mode: the players that pursuit flag and make the effort to stay near to it (flag) can gain more points than others that are farer.
The final report should count how many explosions players suffered, points earned, "bomb run" time and "run near bomb" time.
The winner would be the player with more "bomb runs" with less explosions suffered (bomb runs evaluated by time length, the longer the more valuable will be), or "runs" near the bomb (all evaluated by time length).
some final details:
If player with the bomb presses R for recovering or rolls over his car the bomb isn't lost, but remains in the car's roof and timer continues counting.
Like in CTF, flag can't be stolen after a recent steal. Can be stolen again only after 3 sec. In bomb passing should happens the same.
The maps can be the actual CTF maps, or smaller ones (round ones like bullfighters arenas.
Destruction derby pc game demonstrates it:
So, I think you guys have the code mostly done (MODEL). It's only a matter of changing it a little (CONTROL) and making some new visual stuff (VIEW).
The 3rd suggestion, best lap in ghost mode, should be the combination of: "best lap replay" and the actual practice running lap (for each lap of the practice session).
Eventually, the "best lap replay" could change to better, the actual lap done by player.
So, each lap must be recorded (like a replay tape) and if its finish time is better than the best until the moment, that "lap replay" should be promoted to "best lap replay" and should be the "ghost mode" in the next running lap.
The ghost car should start always when the player reaches start/finish line. If ghost car reaches finish line first, then it must wait for the player until he reaches finish line too.
If player reaches finish line first, best lap replay should be updated (previous lap) and ghost car should never end that lap (never reach finish line), and "best lap replay", now updated, should start at same time player reaches finish/star line.
The intention is to have the ghost car synchronized with the player in each lap. Player must see the ghost car like a metric or scale/comparison to know if he's doing better or worse in each moment of lap, (besides the actual checkpoints that actually give the player a numeric (colored) track portion performance time).
The replay mode functionality must be combined/associated to the lap practice functionality, but the replay mode should be set in "ghost mode".
I believe you have the functionality code to these requisitions already done, but separately. Its only a matter of combination/conjugation .