A Guide To Most Distance Mechanics
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> When Front Wheels Accelerate And When Back Wheels Accelerate

 First, it should be noted that, in any level with boost enabled, holding the boost down (or activating boost) has the exact same effect on the spin of the wheels as activating gas does. This is why you don't get any extra acceleration by holding gas and boost down simultaneously; its because they both trigger the same "gas" function, and having two triggers for the one function doesn't make it work with double power or anything. So, for reference, when I say "gas", in the future paragraphs in this section, I am referring to the gas function, rather than the control tied to the gas button.

 So, one of the primary ways that wheels are accelerated is when they are rolled across a surface. This happens usually when, well, you drive on a surface. Often times, your boost pushes you forward, and because your wheels are on the surface and have friction on the surface, they will begin to spin faster than they would ever be able to spin if you were just holding gas, since boost is so much more powerful. The wheels can be accelerated forward or backward on a surface so long as you move forward or backward respectively.

 Holding gas will always make your back wheels accelerate forward. This much should be obvious. They will also give power to make your front wheels accelerate forward as well, albeit this amount of power is very very small compared to that given to the back wheels and hardly enough to do anything special.

 At this point, I'll note that, if the spin a wheel has been the result of the wheels being rolled on a surface, and that wheel leaves that surface, it will retain that spin indefinitely until it touches another surface. Though, while this spin is essentially "stored", holding gas while a wheel has this stored spin will still make the wheel spin faster forward, even if it means reaching wheel spin speeds that could not be achieved by a wheel, without a stored spin, not touching a surface and while holding gas. If you let go of gas, the airborn wheel will slow down, but only until it reaches its "stored" speed again, which it will continue spinning at.

 Now I will talk about brake/reverse. The brake/reverse function will make your back wheels accelerate backwards, but only if the car isn't moving very fast forward. If the car is moving fast forward, the brake/reverse function will only decelerate your wheels to a stop. Even if the wheels are spinning backwards and you are moving significantly forwards, holding brake/reverse will still decelerate these wheels, rather than keep them spinning backwards. What the game counts as "forwards" is a little vague to me, but it seems to generally be the direction the car nose points in. In essence though, when the car tries to just slow the wheels to a stop irregardlessly, it is the “brake” function of the brake/reverse action, and when the car accelerates the wheels backward, it the “reverse” function of the brake/reverse action. Similar to gas, the "reverse" function also accelerates the front wheels to spin backwards, however with a very very small power compared to that given to the back wheels. In contrast, the "brake" function is just as strong in stopping the back wheels from spinning as it is in stopping the front wheels from spinning.

 Like with gas, if the wheels are spinning with a backward “stored” spin, and you do the “reverse” function, the wheels will accelerate even faster backward, even when it would mean spinning the wheel faster backward than it normally could go without any stored speed in midair. And, if after doing this, you stop doing the “reverse” function, the wheels will slow down and eventually return to spinning backward indefinitely at the “stored” spin speed.

 It should be noted that the "stored" spin in airborn wheels is not completely eliminated, even by using brake/reverse. If you use brake/reverse on an airborn wheel with a forward "stored" spin, it will slow the airborn wheel down to a halt if the “brake” function is used, and even accelerate it in reverse if the “reverse” function is used. If you accelerate it in reverse and then stop reversing, the wheel will eventually slow to a stop on its own. However, just because the wheel stops or spins in the opposite direction to the initial “stored” spin doesn’t mean that the “stored” spin goes away. If you begin to hold gas after doing this, the airborn wheel will accelerate to spin forward at the speed it would have if you held gas while the wheel was spinning at the initial stored spin speed, and if you then let go of gas, your wheel will again spin indefinitely at the stored spin speed. This also works in reverse. If you use gas on an airborn wheel with a backward "stored" spin, it will spin the wheel forward, and if you then let go of gas, the wheel will eventually slow to a halt on its own. However, if you begin to use the “reverse” function after doing this, the wheel will accelerate to spin backward at the speed it would have if you used the “reverse” function while the wheels were spinning at the stored spin speed, and if you then stop using the “reverse” function, the wheels will again spin backward indefinitely at the stored spin speed.

 If this seems complicated, don’t worry, there’s still more. If the initial “stored” spin speed is too high, either forwards or backwards, you won’t ever be able to accelerate your wheels to that speed after decelerating them to a stop or after spinning them in the opposite direction. In these cases, the “stored” spin becomes reduced to, from what I can tell, a fixed speed limit, so that you still have a “stored” spin after either spinning the corresponding airborn wheel in the opposite direction to the initial spin or stopping its spin entirely, but that “stored” spin will be not as fast as the initial “stored” spin. This means that if you are in the air, you don’t want to just slow your wheels down and then try to speed them back up again because if the “stored” spin was fast enough, you won’t be able to make them go as fast again while in the air.

 Who knew wheels were so complicated?

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