But then, the IT instinct kicked in. He hadn't started a new game yet. The file was corrupted, sure, but the data had to be somewhere. A file doesn't just vanish; it just becomes unreadable.
For Crash Tag Team Racing, the save data folder is typically named: ULES00176 (This varies slightly depending on your game region, e.g., ULUS10067 for the USA version).
He mashed Yes.