New player needs help with the first Time Attack subquest

I just bought the game and made it to the time attack subquest.

This minigame is hell...

1. When you look at where you are going, you often cannot see where the boost rings are (can't they at least add a shadow or something?).
2. When you jump there is very little indication of how much horizontal movement you're getting in the air. You have little idea where you are landing, into the boost ring or into the abyss.
3. When you jumped into the water, the game put you back on land but doesn't even reposition your camera properly. There's no point to continue once that happens, is there.

I went to YouTube and checked out the whole route... then I tried 10+ times and always end up missing a jump and fall into the water (because I somehow moved too much horizontally) or timeout (due to wasting time jumping off a boost ring but without sufficient horizontal movement, so I ended up back where I was or worse).

I heard progressing the story will remove subquests, so I must do this quest now. Is there any tips or tricks to this? How to better control the camera and mid-air movement?

EDIT: After 6 more tries I finally did it (14 seconds left). It is agonizing. It is the hardest quest I've seen in this game.