The first time in a game you control a permanent with start your engines!, your speed becomes 1. This happens immediately, so no one can respond and try to remove the permanent before you pick up speed. Once your speed is 1 or greater, you can trigger an ability to increase your speed. That ability is "Whenever one or more opponents lose life during your turn, if your speed is less than 4, increase your speed by 1. This ability triggers only once each turn." This ability isn't tied to any permanent. For the rest of the game, it can be triggered as long as your speed is less than 4, no matter what permanents you control.

Each Vehicle begins as simply an artifact. That is, a tantalizingly drivable artifact. Most Vehicles have the crew ability, which turns it into an artifact creature until end of turn. To activate a crew ability, you tap a number of other untapped creatures you control with total power greater than or equal to the number after crew. The crew ability doesn't use the symbol, so you can tap an untapped creature you control that just came under your control to crew a Vehicle. While a Vehicle can't be used to crew itself, a Vehicle that's a creature can be tapped to crew another Vehicle.

Cycling is great on situational cards like Lightshield Parry that have situationally useful effects, but if the right situation doesn't come up—say you need a creature and not a combat trick—you can dig for the card you need. Additionally, some cards have abilities that trigger when you cycle them, or when you discard other cards, so keep those cards flowing! No one wins a race when they're out of gas.