The track of the first competition is a gold surface, equipped with grooves to define race lanes in order to avoid losing vehicles. It is about 100 nanometres long, and includes two bends. It is located in a small enclosure cooled to -269°C under a primary vacuum of 10 mbar and is observed simultaneously by four scanning tunneling microscopes (STM) miniaturized for this event and operating on the same surface. Each microscope is responsible for driving a single vehicle (a single nanocar).
During this competition, the nanocars should move as far as possible on the gold track during the 36 hours race. Speeds of 5 nanometers per hour were expected.