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