And here's another idea.
Can we make the podrace just one lap? This might make it seem shorter and heighten the tension. Maybe use the best parts from all the laps and combine them into one extended lap.
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For my own personal edit of episode 1, I cut the majority of the podrace scene and made it just a hair over 3 minutes long. It runs really smoothly too. One part for example, is where the tusken raiders are shooting at the pods, they hit one pod, it jumps to a close up of the drivers face, then jumps back to showing the pod explode. It fits together seemlessly by cutting the shot of the drivers face and just showing the thing take a hit from the raiders sniper and then explode. There are many scenes like this, it is amazing how much can be removed and not make any difference to the over all race. I really don't like the podrace scene and decided that since it coulden't be taken out completely I would cut it down to almost nothing. I am surprised how well it turned out. In fact I cut right from the "You've never finished a race before?" part straight to Shmi telling Anakin to be careful, then Qui-gon saying to trust your feelings. then the race starts, and three minutes later its all over and we have a freed slave.
Just a suggestion, but I think doing something along these lines really keeps the podrace scene from bogging down the story.