Fred takes to the road for the Gainesville 500, the biggest race he's ever qualified for, with the rest of the gang tagging along as his pit crew. Unfortunately, as usual, the race is dogged by the gang's unusual habit of finding mysteries wherever they go — this one in the form of a literal monster truck driver.
This episode includes examples of the following tropes:
- The Bus Came Back: Burr Batson returns after his last role in "The Fast and the Wormious." He's still as condescending to Fred as the last time they raced against each other.
- Crippling the Competition: The monster driver and his skeleton truck go after the drivers who seem most likely to win, doing things like crushing their cars or tampering with their controls.
- Foreshadowing: Jimmy and Cindy's dad never seems to respond to anyone, even when Fred tries to give him a good-luck thumbs up at the beginning of the race. It indicates he's not real.
- Motive Rant: Jimmy says after being caught that he and Cindy "entered" a crash test dummy into the race, claiming it was their dad. He planned to win the race via remote-control driving and show all the grown-ups who refused to let him join that he wasn't too young to participate.
- No Indoor Voice: Mike Fury never speaks below a yell.
- Pun-Based Title: The title is based on the racing command "Gentlemen, start your engines."
- Red Herring:
- Mike Fury, a member of racer Ricky Burdick's pit crew is loud and aggressive and Daphne notes that he seems like he'd do anything to make sure Ricky won. He isn't the culprit.
- Burr Batson drives a monster truck and is still unpleasant. He also isn't the culprit.
- Shout-Out: The villains of the week are called Jimmy and Cindy.
- Totem Pole Trench: The person lurking in the shadows and controlling the monster truck driver turns out to be Jimmy and Cindy, with Jimmy standing on Cindy's shoulders to reach adult height.
- Vehicular Sabotage: Somehow the villain of the week manages to hack the racecars. Fred loses control of the car when the monster truck driver takes control of the power steering and sends it crashing through a billboard. After the rest of the gang comes to the rescue, Fred finds a device that the villain used.
- You Meddling Kids: Played with; because the villains of the week are preadolescent, they grouchily call the gang "meddling grown-ups" when giving the standard end-of-episode rant.
