Racing Cars

Objective:

To get round the circuit you've built (out of LEGO), without crashing.

Requirements:

• A large flat LEGO board covered in studs (the grey 50x50 is ideal)
• Lots of 1 x 1 blocks (one colour for each player)
• Lots of 1 x n blocks (any colour) to build the circuit. (where n can be any number from 2 to 16)
• One 1 x 6 plate (to mark the start line)

On Your Marks...

Build a circuit on the board, using LEGO blocks to mark the sides of the track. The track should be about 6 studs wide, but feel free to add chicanes, right angle corners and so on. You will get the hang of building good circuits as you play. Try to use up all the board, including the middle. This racing game requires skill, not speed, and an oval would be boring. Use a thin 1x6 plate to mark the start/finish line.

Get Set...

The cars are represented by 1x1 blocks; one colour per player. You start by placing one 'car' per player on the start line. You will need loads of 1x1 blocks to drive (you can get away with about 5 per player minimum - that's loads!). Each player uses a different colour.

Go...

Each turn, you can change your acceleration by one stud. So, in your first go, you place a new 'car' block on the stud next to the one on the start line. In your second go, you can leave a one-stud gap. Maybe it will be easier to explain in pictures:

	First Go: 	#....

	Second Go	##

	Third Go	##.#

	Fourth Go	##.#..#

	Fifth Go	##.#..#...#

What you are doing is leaving a trail behind you as you progress through the course. When you run out of blocks, you may take ones from the end of the trail. But you need enough blocks still standing to tell you how fast you are going and how much you accelerated or decelerated over the last go.

You may move the same number of squares as in your last go, or one more or one less. This corresponds to staying at the same speed, going faster and going slower.

...into the first corner...

So far we've only talked about one direction. if you think of the board arranged with the sides pointing North-South, then the rule of moving the same number of squares, or one more or one less applies independently in the North-South direction and the East-West direction.

Just when you thought you were in the lead, you realised there was a corner approaching. This is where the skill comes in. You need to slow down in time for a corner. If you hit a wall, or your next move makes you go through a wall, you lose the game. (*) So, you need to calculate how much room you need to slow down before you hit the end wall.

The other thing about corners is that you need to change direction. If you have been going in a straight line, you keep moving the same speed in that direction and you can move one stud to the side. For example if you are moving right at a speed of 5 studs west to east, as shown below, you still move eastwards at that speed if you start turning.

	...........................
	#....#....#................            North
	...............#...........              ^
	...........................              |
	....................#......

You need to slow down in the eastward direction at the same time as speeding up in the southward direction. (You may do both in the same turn, but you can only change speed by one stud in each direction).

And so it continues until one of the players hits a wall or completes a lap. Note that your first lap may take half an hour - do NOT set a goal to be the winner after 80 laps or you will get bored.

Because you are using lego, you can rip up the circuit and make a new one for the next heat in the Grand Prix Championships.

Play well!