Heat: Pedal to the Metal

Setup and objective: choose a track and use its Heat and Stress configuration. Shuffle each driver’s 12 Basic cards, 3 Starting Upgrades and Stress into a deck; put Heat in the engine, start in first gear and draw seven cards. Race the required laps to finish ahead.

Each round, shift and commit cards simultaneously: stay in gear or shift one step; pay one engine Heat to shift two steps. Gears 1–4 require 1–4 cards respectively, normally excluding Heat. Resolve movement, reactions, corners and replenishment one car at a time from front to back.

Speed and Stress: add the played speed values and move. For each Stress symbol, flip your own deck until a Basic speed card valued 1–4 appears; add it to your play area and discard the other flipped cards. The Starting Upgrade cards valued 0 and 5 are not Basic cards for this purpose.

Heat and reactions: paying Heat moves it from engine to discard. Once per turn you may pay one Heat to boost, adding the flipped Basic card’s speed. First gear provides cooldown 3, second gear cooldown 1; cooldown returns Heat from hand to engine. You cannot freely discard Heat or Stress in the optional discard step. Finally discard played cards and refill to seven.

Adrenaline and slipstream: the last car to move gets an optional extra speed and/or cooldown; with at least five starting cars, the last two qualify. After reacting, a car alongside or immediately behind another may slipstream two spaces once. This does not increase corner-check speed, but corners crossed this way still require checks.

Corners and spinouts: check every Corner Line crossed this turn, paying the positive difference between total speed and each speed limit in order. If you cannot pay, spend all remaining engine Heat and return to the first available space before that corner. Add one Stress to hand from gears 1–2 or two from gears 3–4, then shift to first.

Positioning and finish: cars can pass through others, but if both spots in the destination space are occupied, stop in the nearest free space behind them. The spot nearest the Race Line leads a side-by-side tie. Among cars completing the required laps in the same round, the furthest ahead wins, with Race Line position breaking a tie. Slipstreaming cannot cross the finish or be used after finishing; ignore corners beyond the finish.

Optional modules: Garage replaces the Starting Upgrades with three drafted upgrades. Legends uses a shared deck to control opponents for solo play or a fuller multiplayer field. Weather and Road Conditions modify setup, corners or sectors; a Championship accumulates race points while managing upgrades and sponsorships.