Absolutely and utterly incompetent storytelling. We jump into a race with a bunch of characters we've barely heard from (and plenty we haven't) with no sense of stakes, that lasts a full half of the first episode, during which time we almost exclusively get commentary from the announcers. At no point in the race does it seem like the anime or the announcers are trying to build up tension, it's just round and round until the favorite wins and the second favorite comes in second. The main character herself is only in the final couple minutes of the episode and we get barely anything from her. The substance we got from this episode feels like it'd be the first few minutes before the OP in a much better written show, which is not a good sign.

I do like the car designs, and I think they show off some personality (or at least I imagine they do, since we know very little about the people racing them) and they look very distinct, which will make it easy to tell them apart on the track. The CGI characters also look pretty good, but it's a shame we didn't get to see much of them.

Overall, 1/5

Side note: is there really a point to having AI racers in these sorts of sporting events? I'm not a racing fan or a sports fan in general, but isn't the point usually to watch the limits of human capability and/or to follow the human drama of wins and loses? It feels like an AI just wouldn't be interesting for the target audience.