I noticed that most people at the top of the leaderboard use a digital copy of the game is there any advantage to this?

Digital (specifically installed to internal memory) loads much faster than physical, saving minutes over the course of a run. It does vary between categories but you'll usually be seeing something like 3 minutes or more.

The physical copy has the longest load times: using a digital copy saves around three or four minutes over the course of the run, depending on the category.

You want the game file on your internal flash memory, as this results in the shortest load times. Loading from SD is slightly slower than internal flash, but nowhere near as slow as physical.

Thanks, but Is there any way to cut out the loading time on physical?

No good way right now. Members of the community were working on an autosplitter, but that never came into being. The only (copyright-legal) thing you can do right now is estimate what your time would be on digital, and that varies per category.

If you tell me what category you're running, I'll do you a solid: I'll take the time from the WR of that category and remove the load times, then tell you what that time is, so you have an easier way of comparing.

Edit: I'll also try to furnish some example pictures for AutoSplit, but again, I need to know the category.

Thanks, but that won’t be necessary at the moment as I don’t yet have any runs, and won’t have any noteworthy ones anytime soon, but the category will be any% nmg.