How Rush Hour works
Six toy karts race two laps of a ramp-and-loop track and the winner pays 5.7x. Track, comeback rules, photo finishes and the three Rush Hour Drops.
Rush Hour is the kart race, and its tagline sums it up: "Six karts. Two laps. One winner." Pick the kart that crosses the line first and your pick pays 5.7x, stake included, so 100 comes back as 570.
How a race plays
Six toy karts race two laps of a course about 272 m long, and a race typically takes about 32 seconds. One lap runs down the main straight, around a hairpin, along a back straight with a ramp jump and a corkscrew loop, through a chicane and around a second hairpin.
Grid positions and driving styles are shuffled by the round's seed, so every kart starts with the same 1 in 6 chance. A leader is never safe for long, because the race has four ways back for the karts behind:
- Drafting behind another kart adds speed, most of all on the main straight. A full tow meter slingshots the kart past.
- Karts charge a battery as they drive, much faster in a slipstream, and spend it on short energy pulses to pass or defend.
- Holding a drift through a tight corner pays out a mini-turbo on the way out.
- After the first 5 seconds, any kart more than 15 m behind the leader gets 3% more top speed.
How the winner is decided
The first kart over the line wins, and the race ends there. The rest are placed by how far along the track they are. Each crossing is timed to a fraction of the game's 50 ms step, so exact ties are rare.
If second place is less than 0.15 s from the line when the winner crosses, it's a photo finish. Close finishes replay the line in slow motion, and the tightest ones get a PHOTO FINISH stamp.
Two karts crossing at exactly the same moment is a dead heat. The round is void and every pick is refunded.
Races normally finish well inside the 45-second cap. If one ever reaches it, the kart furthest up the road wins, and if the top two are exactly level the round is void.
Drops in Rush Hour
A Drop here lands at full strength while its kart has 140 m or more to go. Closer to the finish its effect shrinks, down to 12% at the line. Durations shrink less: at the line a Nitro still runs for about half its full time, an Oil slick still spins a kart for at least 0.3 s, and a Bubble's immunity always lasts the full 3 s.
| Drop | Kind | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Nitro | Speed | Up to 25% more top speed for up to 2.5 s. |
| Bubble | Shield | 3 s of immunity to bumps and spin-outs at any distance, plus up to 10% more speed. It clears a spin already under way, and a bubbled kart shoves others aside. |
| Oil slick | Chaos | Spins the kart out for up to 0.75 s and cancels any drift, turbo or Nitro. A Bubble blocks it. |
The server picks which Drop you get and which kart it hits. Prices and limits are on how Drops work.
What the scoreboard shows
The strip across the top of the card shows the first three karts in running order, plus yours if you picked one further back. The leader wears the crown, and its chip reads "Lap 1/2", then "Final lap", then "Wins" once it's over the line. Every other chip shows its gap to the leader in seconds, like "+0.42s".
