It makes you care, genuinely and stupidly, about a plastic car with no driver in it. That is the trick this franchise has always run: the race is decided in the garage, in motor choice and roller setup and the last-second gamble on a lighter body, and then all Retsuya and Gouki can do is sprint alongside the track screaming at a machine that cannot hear them. MAX hands the baton to a new pair of brothers with the same hunger Go and Retsu had, then spends 51 episodes throwing sabotage at them, because an evil organization rigging the course is the only villain that makes sense when your sport has no contact. The best stretches are the ones where winning matters less than protecting the reason they started. Two kids, a workbench, and a track they refuse to let anyone poison.

Retsuya and Gouki are two brothers who share one goal with Go and Retsu before them: to race and win championships. Along the way they run into a string of traps laid by an evil organization. Together with their friends, they try to get as much fun out of every race as they can, showing their competitive spirit and standing up to any wrongdoing that could put the sport they love at risk. Expect a sports series built around racing rivalries and teamwork.