There is a new NASCAR series called the Unlimited Series, and team Fastex owner Jack Fassler has hired four racers: Mark "Charger" McCutchen, Steve "Flyer" Sharp, Carlos "Stunts" Rey and Lyle "Collector" Owens. He fired Lyle "The Collector" Owens for disruptive racing while he seeks a contract with Fassler's nemesis, Garner Rexton, owner of Rexcor. He spies Fassler, who has finished the prototype cars. While Flyer drives his car, he loses control on the track.
Flyer manages to stop the car after losing control of it, but Jack is more concerned about letting his daughter Megan driving for the team. He finally gives her a chance reluctantly. At a banquet before the first race, Lyle challenges Mark to a race in the Rescue Racers at the quarry, and he agrees. However the race is fixed and Charger's car (podrace prototype) flies off a closed road into a river.
Mark ends up in a river, but was subsequently saved.
Megan is seriously injured in a crash during a race. After Duck and Jack argue publicly over whether mechanical failure was responsible for the crash, Duck quits as Team Fastex crew chief. Duck goes looking for another job with Rexcor. Garner hires him as a mechanic, hoping to learn more about the Team Fastex cars, but Duck is secretly working undercover to find out if Rexcor was behind the crash and Jack's been in on it all along. Together Duck and Jack penetrate a Rexcor factory and learn that Garner has developed a microwave beam that scrambles the electrical system of a car while it's racing. With the next race already underway, Duck and Jack have to rush back to the speedway to save Charger, Stunts, and Flyer from suffering the same fate as Megan.
Recovering from her wreck, Megan trains alone on the Team Fastex simulator — alone, until she encounters a mysterious virtual reality driver who has somehow penetrated the simulator's computer. Despite her suspicions, a lonely and vulnerable Megan finds herself attracted to the unknown driver. The driver makes a deal with her: if she drives as his co-pilot in a virtual reality race, he'll reveal his identity. But Megan doesn't know that the VR driver is a computerized Lyle Owens, and that in the ""VR"" race she'll be operating Owens' real car by remote control, racing it against her own Fastex teammates. Only when she's almost won the race for Owens does she realize the truth and turn Owens' car against Rexcor.
Colonel Straub, a military intelligence officer recruits ""Captain Sharp"" as a scout, searching for a suspected chemical weapons factory operated by Brock Vanleer, a rogue Army major and chemical warfare specialist. The secret militia base is near the course of an Unlimited Series off-road race, and Flyer's cover as a driver protects him when he's captured by Vanleer. But the sinister financial backer bankrolling the chemical weapons, who turns out to be Garner Rexton, wants Flyer eliminated. Flyer is saved when the other Fastex drivers arrive and help him take on the heavily armed militia, using their race cars to battle tanks and helicopters. But all traces of the chemicals are destroyed, and with them any chance for Flyer to determine if a similar chemical nerve agent caused his on-going panic attacks.
Lyle Owens sabotages Charger's car and strands him in the wilderness during an Alaskan off-road race. When a blizzard hits, the other Fastex drivers risk their own lives to search for their lost teammate. Charger is about to succumb to the cold when a small airplane crashes nearby. Charger's determination to save a mysterious injured man trapped in the plane gives him the strength to keep going until he's rescued by Team Fastex. But when Charger leads the team to the airplane, they discover that the crash site is a decade old: it's the long-abandoned wreckage of the plane in which Charger's own father was killed. Was Charger hallucinating... or did the ghost of his father return to save him?
After Miles accidentally takes over a computer-controlled car and creates chaos at Fastex headquarters, Charger banishes him from the Fastex garage and pits. Meanwhile, Garner Rexton schemes to reprogram the computer that controls the Motorsphere so that the sphere's morphing track will attack the Team Fastex cars during the next race and try to destroy them. Miles and Shelby are trapped inside the Motorsphere with Team Fastex. As the Fastex drivers struggle against the automated obstacles and lasers thrown at them by the Motorsphere, Miles uses his technical savvy to disable the computer and save the day.
While training for an off-road race in a South American, Team Fastex pays a visit to the scientific research station run by Libby Fassler — only to find that Libby has been kidnapped. When the Fastex drivers mount a search for her, they unexpectedly encounter the Rexcor Team, which has been sent into the rain forest by Garner Rexton to try to rescue Libby. Fastex and Rexcor join forces in an uneasy alliance until the kidnappers are located. But as the Fastex drivers use their cars to take on the kidnappers, they also find themselves fighting with the Rexcor drivers, who are determined to earn a reward from Garner by rescuing Libby themselves. After the kidnappers are defeated, Libby and Jack call Garner to thank him for his help — not knowing that it was Garner who hired the kidnappers in the first place, so that he could ""rescue"" Libby and be a hero in her eyes.
Stunts begins moonlighting, doing Evil Knievel-type stunt jumps in partnership with a beautiful stunt driver named Eve Kildare. Stunts begins falling for Eve — unaware that she's purposefully trying to lure him away from Team Fastex as a way of repaying a debt she owes Garner Rexton. Faced with a choice between Team Fastex and Eve, Stunts suggests a compromise to Jack: Why not have Team Fastex, under Eve's expert direction, execute a fantastic stunt jump before the start of the next race? Garner directs Eve to sabotage the jump, hoping to eliminate Team Fastex in a single spectacular disaster. The team manages to survive, and Eve flees in a stolen Unlimited Series racer. Stunts pursues in his Team Fastex car and catches her. He still has strong feelings for Eve, but despite the pain it causes him, he hands her over to the police.
Thieves being hotly pursued by the police hide a new guidance component stolen from a government lab in the Team Fastex hauler — in Flyer's car. But when the thieves return later to get the component, Flyer's car has been painted in a red, white, and blue flag motive as PR for an upcoming ""All-American"" highway cross-country race, and the thieves no longer recognize it. The race becomes a running battle, as the thieves, armed with monster trucks, bulldozers, and a helicopter, try to knock out the Fastex cars one by one until they discover the one with the stolen component hidden in it.
A mysterious stranger named Kent Steele appears at the diner and challenges the Team Fastex drivers to a race. Megan manages to keep her hot-headed teammates from accepting the challenge, and instead Flyer takes Steele on in a VR air combat game — and loses, which triggers another of Flyer's panic attacks. When Charger and Stunts try to teach Steele some respect, he mops the floor with them. Next Steele turns up at Rexcor headquarters, where Garner Rexton shocks Lyle Owens by informing him that Steele will be taking his place on the Rexcor Team in the last race of the Unlimited Series. Fastex too is working on a ""secret weapon"" for the last race: a supercar that pushes the performance envelope far beyond the team's regular cars. But when Charger uses the simulator to drive the new car on a remote-controlled test run, the car goes out of control and disintegrates. Jack decides the experimental car is beyond the capabilities of any driver to control: Fastex will have to run the las
With the last, decisive race coming up, the Team Fastex drivers manage to bury their differences and work as a team again. Together, they ask Jack to allow one of them to drive the dangerous experimental car, with the driver to be chosen at random. Charger is chosen to drive the car, but now Megan has second thoughts. She tries to talk Charger out of it, admitting her feelings for him and saying that she'll always blame herself if something happens to him. Miles too asks Charger not to drive the car, afraid that he might lose Charger as they lost their father. But Charger is determined to take his best chance at victory, especially when he discovers that his fans are waiting for him to prove worthy of the McCutchen name. Meanwhile, Lyle Owens persuades Eve Kildare to let him use the Unlimited Series racer Stunts drove in their daredevil act so that he can enter the last race. The presence of Owens in the race is a wild card that complicates the battle between the Rexcor and Fast
It's the start of a brand-new NASCAR Unlimited Series season, and Team Fastex is back in their new XPT racers. But there are new kids in town, intent on crashing Jack Fassler's pre-season party. Redline, Octane, Chrome, Grim Repo, and Tanker challenge Fastex to a race, and with some additional goading from Rexcor drivers Zorina, Junker, and Specter, our heroes give in. Stunts, who's desperate to prove that he's no second-stringer to Charger, is disgusted when it appears his pre-race tangle with Grim Repo will keep him sidelined for the unplanned event. Fortunately for him, another new arrival in the garage area, ""Lugnut"" Gooch, gets him back on track to take the first checkered flag of the season.
A runaway reation in a catalytic blender for the new atomic gasoline levels a fuel research lab in New Motor City, and nearly takes out Charger and Spitfire as well. Garner Rexton is disappointed at the news of their survival, but sees his chance to rectify the situation when Lyle Owens comes begging for his old job back. Garner agrees to The Collector's return if he takes Charger out before the first (official) race of the season. To fulfill his end of the evil bargin, Owens lures Charger into a trap in the burned fuel center. But in the end, it's The Collector that winds up taking the toxic bath while an injured Charger still manages to steal the checkered flag from Redline in an amazing last to first victory.
Though he managed to free himself from the toxic trap at the burned out fuel center, Charger did not escape unscathed. A dislocated vertebre leads to a dismal qualifying effort and a decision to sit out the second race of the new season. But when Team Rexcor's car #909 mystery driver is revealed as the mutated Lyle Owens, Charger is not about to give his would-be assassin the satisfaction of seeing him sidelined. The Collector is determined not to let Charger win another race, making several attempts to wreck him, including a final try on the last lap when his own barely functional car is a lap down. Yet Charger prevails, again snatching the checkered flag from Redline's grasp, this time thanks to an expert landing of his Rescue Racer on the hood of O'Roarke's car.
Brock Vanleer is back, and out for revenge. After filling the top of the Motorsphere with vaporized atomic fuel, he threatens to blow up the spectator-filled arena unless Flyer steps forward in exchange for their lives. The noble Flyer of course does so, but Vanleer has no intention of disarming his ticking timebomb, as his plan is for vengence against all of Team Fastex. While Flyer faces the daunting motor-enhanced strength of Vanleer's exo-skeleton, Charger, Stunts, and Spitfire have to figure out a way to climb and vent the Motorsphere while dodging bullets from Vanleer's henchmen and helicopter gunships.
Team Fastex is hot — too hot! When their cars overheat and blinding smoke and fire force them off the track during time trials, it's pretty obvious that someone from Team Rexcor has been tampering with their temperature gauges. That someone actually turns out to be a something named Kent Steele. In a Vanleer-inspired plot, Garner Rexton's terminator android has sabotaged Team Fastex's atomic fuel mixture to not only torch their cars, but to blow another fuel center and much of New Motor City sky high. With Spitfire in the lead, Team Fastex exchanges their racing suits for radiation suits to take on the pseudo-man Steele.
Worth Dwindling cons new partner Carlos Rey into agreeing to the Stunts Café Million Dollar Rumble, an unofficial race at Rexcor Raceway. In other words — it's anything goes and dirty-tricks to the max! On the track, the Team Fastex drivers find themselves up against a new Team Rexcor consisting of The Collector, Kent Steele, Tanker, and Grim Repo, but what they don't know is that they're also facing Rexton, Junker, Specter, and Zorina thanks to remote-control devices planted under their hoods by a Charger-disguised Kent Steele the night before. It looks like instead of going to the bank, Team Fastex is going to get taken to the cleaners. Fortunately, Miles discovers the ploy, but unfortunately, he is only able to recruit the clumsy Lugnut to help him. Despite everything, Stunts still manages to pull off the win in his namesake race... yet still loses when Dwindling disappears with the prize money.
After only seven races of use, the XPT Racers are deemed too twitchy, and the NASCAR Unlimited Series switches to new Nitro Racers. The high-flux fusion units of these new cars get maximum power out of atomic fuel, something the old forced-combustion systems never could. But because it's unknown just how much power this is, the first race for the new cars is being held on the Bonneville Salt Flats. When Flyer refuses to launch his Rescue Racer in favor of attempting to save his out-of-control car, Glorie can't bear to watch him risk his life anymore, and heads to the airport to fly back to New Motor City. As fate would have it, aboard the same flight is Reed, an undercover operative for Garner Rexton who has stolen one of Fastex's fusion units for Rexcor to replicate. When a blizzard forces the pilot of the plane to turn back, Reed hijacks the flight, but only manages a crash landing atop a mountain. Flyer leads Team Fastex in a race against time up snow-choked logging trails to
Carlos is about to take the lead from Lyle Owens in the final stretch of the Inca 500, but instead must rescue a man whose pickup truck The Collector rams off the Andes Mountain road course. The grateful, indebted Pablo has little to offer by way of reward, except a single gold coin and tale of a lost temple full of untold more riches. The greatly in debt Carlos sets off on a treasure hunt with Team Rexcor hot on his trail thanks to a bug Spex has planted in Team Fastex's garage. ""Luckily,"" Gooch is nearly rundown by the Rexcor racers, thus giving warning to the other Fastex drivers who also set out in pursuit of their teammate. Stunts finds the treasure and big trouble, as Rexcor has beaten him to the temple where The Collector's skull-emblazoned racing suit has tricked the treasure guardians into believing Owens is their long-awaited king Tehualpa. The rest of Team Fastex shows up in time to keep Stunts from being gold plated, but are in turn captured themselves. Stunts accuses
NASCAR veteran Farrell Longstreet, who used to race with Junior McCutchen, joins the circuit and immediately gets a hard lesson in Unlimited racing from Flyer, whose over the top pass causes the series' rookie to spin out. Charger, who idolizes Longstreet, takes Flyer to task over the incident, though Farrell assures them both that he harbors no hard feelings. He does, however, decline Sharp's invitation to join him in a weight lifting session at the Fastex Training Center gym. Flyer is joined there by Octane, who slips him some hallucinogenic-laced water. In the next day's race, Sharp believes he is back in the Air Force flying a combat mission and it is up to Stunts to get Glorie close enough to the rampaging racer to snap him out of the delusion. Meanwhile, Spitfire becomes caught up in a nightmare of her own when she receives a video tape from a mysterious woman claiming to be her real mother.
Undergoing testing at the Motorcity hospital, Flyer unhappily must sit out the next race in which a stuck throttle causes Charger to wreck the popular Farrell Longstreet. The NASCAR fans quickly turn against Charger, who heads home to Mobile, Alabama to consider whether to continue racing. Since everyone else in Team Fastex seems to be too busy to go after Charger, Flyer slips out of the hospital to find his friend, and ends up helping McCutchen save a school yard full of kids from a runaway delivery truck. The re-inspired drivers return to Fastex only to learn that Megan, who has confirmed through genetic testing that Jack and Libby Fassler are not her real parents, has quit the team.
Garner Rexton fires Zorina, replacing her with Tanker. The angry Zorina then seeks out Megan Fassler and joins her new team, Spitfire Racers, which also includes Chrome and Eve Kildare. Kildare, as the new ""Wildcard,"" wrecks Stunts during their head-to-head time trial. Reduced once again to two drivers, Jack consents to putting Douglas ""Rubber Ducky"" Dunaka back in a driver's seat. Rexton jumps at the chance to employ his team's Rexcor Crunch to eliminate Fastex's Chief Mechanic, though Gooch is surprisingly handling his promotion to the position rather well. With Team Fastex busy trying to save Duck, Spitfire and Wildcard manage to beat out Redline for the Spitfire Racers first victory.
While engaged in a motorcycle challenge with Stunts, Zorina is abducted by Junker and his underworld partners so that Rexton can ""convince"" her to help plant bombs in a plot to wipe out Team Fastex and steal the gate receipts from the next race. During the robbery, one of the thugs decides to abduct Jack Fassler as insurance. Megan gives up a chance for another Spitfire Racers win to save the only father she has ever known, and manages to barely escape being blown up alongside her former teammates. The singed, but reunited Team Fastex manages to recover the stolen cash and rescue Jack, who reveals to Megan that her birth mother made him and Libby promise not to tell Megan she was adopted.
Worth Dwindling reappears to lure Stunts into a meeting with Rexton, who promises funding for the medical research Carlos' father needs if Stunts helps Rexcor win the final race of the season and by so doing, the Unlimited Series Championship. His back to the wall financially, Carlos agrees, and permits The Collector to take the pole in their joint time trial. Megan, who is again driving for Team Fastex, announces that Spitfire Racers will be disbanded after the race, but Zorina might as well already be back in a Rexcor uniform, for her true colors are apparent come raceday. She and Junker wreck Charger, who is badly shaken up by the crash and cannot continue even though Spitfire pushes his damaged machine onto his IMP. Seeing the stricken son of his former racing friend shames Farrell Longstreet into revealing the phony nature of his own race injuries, leading him to take over as relief driver for Charger. Enraged over Longstreet's betrayal, Rexton orders Specter and The Collecto