I remember this set being completely intact but now the two cars are the only thing left intact. I really liked the pit stop and the winner's circle. The Octan flag was awesome and is still in my junk box of Legos. This is a great set to own.

This set has lot's of play features, and it's really fun to play with. Both race cars look the same - except for the colours. There're no stickers on the cars. We got a nice map of the racetrack and a small tow truck. The tow truck has two stickers. The ceiling of this vehicle does open and the doors open as well. The hook can sviwel as well.

The main building of this racetrack with the cabin and the pit lane look very nice. We get lot's of tools and on the top of the pit lane you can see the cabin for the commentator. The chair you can see there does sviwel and on the top of the ceiling you can also see a sign which shows you the traffic lights. The other side of this racetrack has a podium and a few flags as well. It's a great set to have and fun to build for sure.

All in all, this set is a great set and I would HIGHLY recommend you to get this. You can find this set on eBay and BrickLink for sure. Here is the link where you can check out the full gallery I made for this set on my website: www.klokriecher.de


Videos I made of this set:

Stopmotion

Review

Speed Build

What more can I say about this system- if you like racing, this set is a must-have. Even just looking at it gives you an adrenaline rush.

It is fairly simple to build, but it is solid. And many of the pieces are invaluable if you choose to build something else. It comes with 2 race cars though you'll want more if you want the feeling of a true F1 race.

The podium and the trophy is precious. And there is a little pit stop area with tools and jack- perfect for propping up your car when it needs a fix-up! The tow truck is great too.

Above sits a lookout for presumably the announcer- a female- a good change for a set with mostly male figures.

A couple of drawbacks: the pole on which the lights rest is quite flimsy. The "Octan" banner also doesn't last very long unless you store it properly- it's very prone to warping and creasing. Also, there is no area for spectators to sit.

Overall, a great build. If you really want to get the full experience, I recommend buying other road base plates to create a full racetrack, including other amenities. Or if you were young and imaginative like me, you created the rest of the track with some paper and markers.

Wow! This set is awsome! Cool design, cool & fast cars and a lot of tools. The baseplate can also be used in a petrol station. Well, the only thing I dislike with this set is the building. It's just some poles and some plates! Some doors & windows would be great.

When you’re collecting Lego, there are some sets that you want more than others; it’s not a holy grail set but perhaps it’s something higher up your wanted list than the others. Maybe you’ve always wanted a Star Wars UCS set or maybe an old Model Team hot rod? Perhaps you want some vintage Castle sets, Power Miners, Legends of Chima or you’re trying to collect all the Hydronauts. For me, a lot of the sets that fill up my wish list are the ones that I gazed at in catalogues, glimpsed at friend’s places or were proudly featured in the Lego PC games.

Fast Track Finish is one of those sets for me. It’s a 1996 Classic Town set from the ‘Race’ sub-theme, but I think it’s more well-known for being the race track from Lego Island. That’s right, the race track where you could take part in that unintentional nightmare sprint to the finish line is a real set. In fact quite a few of the vehicles, places and people in Lego Island are based on then current 90s town sets. I have a lot of nostalgia around the idea and image of this set as I spent a lot of time playing Lego Island, walking around the island and driving cars at the racetrack.

Now I didn’t know it was a real set until this year. Sure, I wanted it — we always want more Lego — but I’d never even glimpsed it or seen a decent review. So when I found a decently complete example on eBay, I decided to pull this one off my want list and into reality. I think it’s time to put this set up on the podium and give it a moment in the spotlight.

Building Experience

We start off the set with a brick-built tow truck, with no use of any large chassis pieces or starter piece, which comes together briskly. The finished model of the tow truck looks really good. It’s got all the shaping of a small truck, with an enclosed driver’s cabin, opening roof (for our big human fingers), opening doors, headlights, rear brake lights, and a tow winch that can even be lowered on a hinge to get under the low F1 cars. It’s solid, stable, and aside from the usual issues of getting your fingers and minifigures into the truck, I think it’s very good and this tow truck could easily find use in a Town layout, or could be the start of a gas station/car repair shop build.

Side note: This is also the tow truck that you drive in Lego Island, when undertaking missions from Nubby and Nancy at the Octan gas station, so those looking to make a Lego Island MOC of their own should look for the tow truck build here.

Then we build our race cars. It’s a simple but effective design, and it more closely resembles F1 racing cars than any previous Lego efforts of the time (save for some Model Team sets perhaps). Speaking as someone who owned a variety of Lego polybags of F1 cars, and never owned many substantial brick-built cars, this model is quite good. The scaling feels right, the shaping is simple while leaving something to the imagination and the build also doesn’t take too long, which is a good thing as you have to build two of these cars, one after another so some people might find that to be a bit repetitive.

Lastly, we move on to the race track buildings and the surrounding track material. The structure and shape of Fast Track Finish, which includes a pitlane, a commentator’s box, a podium and track-side area, is built on two baseplates. One of the baseplates is a 32 x 32 green coloured one, with a light grey race track with a pit lane pattern, and another 8 x 32 stud green baseplate provided to give some more room on the pit lane side. The overall build is pretty simple, as we first build two tool racks. You get TWO complete set of tools like drills, spanners, wrenchs, oil cans, which are always great to have in your minifigure accessories area. Following on, we build the whole structure of the trackside buildings with the raised commentator’s box, some roofed areas to provide cover and height and then some stuff on the opposite side of the track, flags, road dividers, a podium and the like. This is all capped off with a large pole extending over the road holding the lights and lap indicators and then a small plastic banner that goes over the road on two poles, creating a nice bit of visual overhang for the track.

The finished product is pretty nice. You’ve got two zippy racecars with drivers, a tow truck at the ready in case of an accident, a pit lane with two pit crew members with a full complement of tools, an announcer up in the box behind glass with a rotating chair, a podium, coloured flags, lights, banners and the like. It’s a bright, colourful fast looking set and the whole build doesn’t take long at all which is great as you can instantly get to racing or setting it up in a town without much delay. I think a fast build for a set like this is a plus, as kids probably just want to race the cars as fast as they can.

We get six minifigures here to round out the set, which I’ll outline below:

• There’s a F1 driver dressed in an all red Octan Racing jumpsuit, with a red star covered helmet. He’s got the typical Lego 1990’s sunglasses and smile on his face.
• There’s the second F1 driver dressed in an all white jumpsuit with the Octan logo and the words “RACE TEAM” on his top. He’s got another common 1990’s face of mustache and smile, which was often seen on the Paradisa sets or as a chef.
• We’ve then got two mechanics or pit crew for each side, one in a red Octan Racing jumpsuit and the other in a blue Octan Oil jumpsuit. Both of these guys have caps in their respective colour and have the typical faces from the 90s – sunglasses and smile.
• We’ve then got another guy, in white this time who doesn’t seem to have a defined role but the box has him holding the checkered flag to finish the race. You could also put him in the commentator’s box or driving the tow truck.
• Lastly, we’ve got an announcer up in the viewing cabin. She’s got one of the usual 1990s town female faces, with a black ponytail and white shirt. It’s good to have a female minifigure here to break up this set, especially for playability purposes and story possibilities.

I do think it would have been nice to get one more minifigure to enable all the play possibilities to be used at once. They could be sitting in the tow truck at the ready, up in the commentator’s box assisting the announcer with her calls, or even just as a bystander, a crowd member or a friend of one of the racers. But I guess with a set like this one, if you have any other minifigures around you can just add them onto this set to simulate a crowd.

But it’s not all good here. I do have two issues with this build though, which I need to cover.

First, there are two stickers across multiple parts (STAMPs) with the massive Octan logos over some large red bricks. I know this is something Lego has stopped doing, and to the credit of Lego you can barely tell it’s even a STAMP with how seamless the sticker is, but it makes it a bit harder for someone to buy a used version of this set or break it down for parts. It’s a giant white sticker across red bricks, and the way it sits it actually looks quite natural and helps to break up the colour. Still, it does make it harder to buy this set second hand as you’d need to find both of these parts in great condition. You could probably do without it, but it’s hard to imagine the set without the Octan branding (advertising and F1 have always gone hand in hand) and I think the set would lose some of its charm without that sticker.

Secondly, there’s a large pole that holds the lights, timer and some numbers to maybe indicate lap numbers. It’s held on to the roof of the viewing box by some clips, but I find it to be a little flimsy in its construction. It also makes it a bit hard to get your hands under and you have to keep working around it when trying to play in the pit lane. It’s easy enough to take off the set when setting up, but if you’re trying to play around and get cars in and out of the pitlane, it does make a bit difficult to work out.

Parts

This set doesn’t have many exclusive parts, and most of the ‘cool parts’ are achieved with the use of stickers on parts to create a new piece. But I’ll cover the ‘hard to find’ parts first.

First, the race track with pit lane baseplate is exclusive to this set and usually goes for about $4 AUD to $20 AUD for just this baseplate. It’s a nice baseplate to have and could be easily repurposed into a petrol station, a weighbridge for trucks or maybe a drive through food restaurant. Baseplates with odd designs, patterns and shapes are always a plus in my book.

Continuing with the hard to find stuff, the tile 2 x 2 with Keyboard used in the commentator’s box isn’t rare per se, but it didn’t show up in many sets. You could pull that out and use it for something else. Then, staying with the commentator’s box, the blue space loudspeaker/air jet on top of the box is a common piece, it showed up in lots and lots of sets but it’s rare in blue. It only showed up in blue in three other sets, so it’s a nice piece to have for your collection. Going down the list, the slopes with the numbers printed on them, the 3x2 and 2x2 slopes, aren’t exclusive to this set as they were usually found in other car related sets like the Go-Kart polybags but they’re nice to have.

Then you get two complete sets of dark grey tools for the tool racks. That is really something, I doubt Lego would do that these days – they’d probably just make a tool car and say that both teams have to share. Getting two full sets of tools really opens up new play possibilities and lets you take those tools elsewhere in your own constructions like a repair shop build or a construction yard.

But...there’s a problem here. I didn’t mention it in the build section because it relates more to a part. And I need to mention this because I think this really affects those people hoping to buy this set either incomplete, complete, or build it from parts through Bricklink.

As I mentioned the set comes with a small white plastic banner that hangs over the racetrack, emblazoned with the words Octan. It's in the picture of the set, hanging over the racetrack on some poles. In case you don’t see it on the set picture, it looks like this [Link to piece here].

My set didn’t come with this piece and this piece rarely shows up on Bricklink. And when I say rarely, I mean rarely. This piece might as well be related to Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster because it’s rarely sighted and when it does show up, it disappears instantly. In the last six months alone, it’s only shown up around 11 times and you can’t find a new example anywhere, it’s only used pieces. It’s not expensive, it’s usually about $5 to $8 Australian dollars but the problem is actually finding it.

It’s a shame that I can’t complete this set, and, to be honest, this missing piece’s presence is felt here. Often with sets where I’m missing a part or two, you can barely notice it. So what if I’m missing the second large pirate flag on the Black Seas Barracuda, you don’t even notice it and besides, it gets in the way! But with this missing piece, I feel like this printed plastic banner really ties a lot of the set together, by adding something over the top of the track. It helps to mark the finish line, adds some verticality to this big wide open road and a splash of colour on the light grey road. I think this element should have been brick built, maybe a large tile on a plate with some clips over the road? As it stands, it feels empty, and you’d either have to make your own replacement out of cloth or paper.

Playability

I think this set would be brilliant for kids, as speed, race cars, potential danger – all of these are the recipe for great stories at a race track.

You can use the tow truck to tow away a broken race car, use the tools to fix it up, and get it back into action. Put figures on the podium to crown a winner of the race, use another minifigure to wave the checkered flag. The road baseplate here could also be repurposed into something else, like a runway, launch pad, road in a city, or a big driveway for a mansion.

What sort of stories could be told at the racetrack? A crash? A hotly contested race between two rival racers? Maybe your Lego minifigure is pulled into the race as a last minute driver, because the other driver got viciously sick? And of course, what if it got jumbled up with your other sets? What if the Insectoids wanted to race, or the Rock Raiders came back from their long journey to watch a day at the race?

The set also scales well as you can add other race-cars from the same 1990’s Race subtheme to add more cars. If you own the 6546 Slick Racer from the same year, or any of the racecars that could be found on the 6335 Indy Transport, you’ve now got more race cars to add to the track for a total of six cars.

Value for Money

I spent around $75 dollars on this set, which was missing a few smaller pieces here and there. So plus another $10 getting the missing pieces on Bricklink and I spent around $85-90 dollars on Fast Track Finish.

Considering the parts you get – full complement of tools, tyres, baseplates, etc – that’s not a bad price. You've got flags, pillars, bricks, plates, glass canopies, car chassis pieces, so really, that's not bad value there. But with this set getting most of its decoration through big stickers across multiple parts, it limits the reuse of these pieces.

The current asking price for any version of this set on Bricklink is $105 AUD, going all the way up to $130 AUD. This set turns up on eBay quite regularly too but commands an average price of $130 dollars. I think that's a bit steep for this set, as the parts don't really command such a high price, and the main reason this set seems to be so expensive for what it is has to come down to the fact that there's very few of them being sold. For whatever reason, it's become a bit scarce.

I do think you could probably part this out on Bricklink and possibly save some money, and if you’re buying this used (as most of us will), you need to check that the stickers are intact and not peeling. Check the condition of the baseplate for stress marks, cracks, and blemishes. See which pieces are missing and where, as some are almost irreplaceable.

As the 1980’s Lego race tracks get inflated in price, like the Shell Speedway set, I think this set will rise in value as a slightly more modern counterpart. This could be a good investment set for the future, particularly as some parts remain very difficult to find. If you want a set comparable to this one, I think the closest parallel set would be the 6381 Motor Speedway from 1987 which included two cars, a commentator’s box, pit lane, etc, but did so with 171 pieces. That set goes for dirt cheap online, I got mine for about $20 dollars.

Final Thoughts

This has been the hardest set for me to review, because I’m so divided on what to think about it. I’ve had this set sitting here now for weeks or so and still have trouble figuring out what to say. I love it in Lego Island but as a set? I’m ambivalent towards it. I know it’s a good race track, with all the pieces and cars, but it just didn’t click with me.

On the one hand, I think this is a handsome little set. With two race-cars, towtruck, track side structure, and all the trimmings, this would make a really lovely racetrack set for a Town layout, or even just to be used in play. The fact that it’s so open makes it easy for a child to get their hands in there, and the full assortment of tools, tyres and track side pieces means this set is useful as parts to be used in your own future creations!

But on the other hand, I feel as if this set is missing a certain...something. It looks a bit hollow, flat, and lacks charm. Maybe it needs trees or plants to add some track side life? Or maybe it needs a grandstand with some spectators, who aren’t present in the set. Maybe it needs a more easily obtainable Octan banner?

Regardless of what it needs, I think a collector buying this today would be buying it for the Lego Island nostalgia value, or to add it to a Town layout. If you’re planning on using it in a display capacity, it looks fine but you may wish to spruce it up a bit. This set didn’t really click with me, but it might work for you.