It's caused by timinng yes. Each 10 seconds without touching any checkpoint Will cause the robot to overheat.
Also get hit by turrets Will overheat the robot.
I thought this was an enough interesting mechanic to speedrun so I centered my development process on It.
Overheating is just a factor that cause the player to lose time, sometimes is worth it to overheat but keep going, sometimes is worth it to go back to a checkpoint
Thanks for the feedback!