In Challenge Mode, the final winner is the player with the highest score. While this will most likely also be the one passing the finish line first (because of the high bonus), others closely following you could have scored significant more other bonuses (like top speeds, scratches, blocks etc.) and ultimately end up with even more points than you.

If you are interested in how in detail the scoring works, then you'll find a very comprehensive explanation on our Rombos Blog. If you prefer to read it on a larger screen on a PC, browse to http://rombosblog.wordpress.com there.

Definitely not! It will be each player's turn exactly once per round, but the sequence is chosen randomly for each new round. Worst case you are last in the current round, while you might have been the first in the previous. So when playing with four players, then there are six moves of the other players before it's your turn again. In such a situation you might feel forgotten, but already the next round will look different and it might be your turn first now, so two times in a row now and you can fight for an important head position. This random component brings an enormous appeal to the game, and if you still don't trust it, just tap the color pencil and check the number of moves for each player. They are for sure at most one move apart of each other, depending on when you look within the current round.

Yes, but you need to switch off the Dash Race music in the configuration dialog. Then you can change to the iPod app and select your own music.
If you also want to listen to your own music during online games, make sure you have switched off voice-chat as well. Since both can not work in parallel, the iPod is automatically paused as soon as voice-chat is activated for you (even if your counterpart has it off and you thus actually won't use it).

The display in the main menu shows the approximate number of people that look for players for Dash Race right now. However, only those can get connected that look for the same number of players. If you, for instance, look for 3 other players, but all the others just want to play with 1 or 2 other players, then you won't get connected by Gamecenter at all. Just try to change the number of players you are looking for, then you should quickly find players to race with you!

This can have multiple reasons. The most simple one is that the other side has switched it off. Furthermore, voice chat is deactivated automatically if the current network bandwidth is not sufficient for playing and transferring voice data at the same time. The third likely reason applies to iPod Touch users that just plugged in their headset with microphone. Dash Race can use this only if it was already connected on app startup. So just terminate and restart Dash Race and you should be good to go.

Provided you are using at least iOS 4.1 to be able to use Gamecenter at all, you probably denied the Gamecenter logon three times in a row in Dash Race or other games. Now you are no longer bothered with these requests. If you now decide to logon, you have to go to the Gamecenter App and do it from there. After that you are automatically logged on for all games.

The major leaderboards are the Challenge boards, and you are only reported to them if you won a race against at least one opponent in challenge mode.

This leaderboard (introduced with version 3.1.1) will bring the most engaged and successful Dash Racers quickly into top positions. The index is computed from the number of races and victories, with won races turbo-charging you up to a top rank. Over time, everyone can climb up to these positions, even though you are entering with a low rank initially.

The robots fare quite well, especially with highest driving skill settings. But like humans, they have good and bad days. Sometimes they do elegant curves, sometimes they make foolish mistakes or don't grab an obvious opportunity. Once you gained some more experience you'll learn that you can outsmart them like other humans.

BTW: To keep things fair, even if robots are sometimes very fast in computing their moves, they are accounted for a time comparable to the average of the human players in the game.

When you are driving your first rounds in Dash Race, robots might appear as the unbeatable masters to you, no matter what driving skills you chose for them. However, when your own skills improve, you'll notice the differences. If you want to be sure, just let some robots race alone with different settings and check the results.

Like in a real race you can cut your opponent's route by occupying a position that will block his ideal route. If this would mean that no fields whatsoever remain for him, he would even crash on his next turn. In Challenge Mode, you'll score extra points for blocking.

If the color pencil with the current player and status is obstructing your view of important parts of the track, you can simply drag it away to a more convenient position.

Sometimes you might wonder why connection lines disappear partially below a track border and so should be a crash. This can happen when a marker that would be placed directly on an existing other line is drawn a few pixel off the already existing line (otherwise it could happen that multiple lines would be drawn on top of each other and can't be distinguished). The connection line between such markers is offset then as well, and then it might run under a track border. But it would only be a crash, if the actual connection between the square crosses would touch the track border.

At any point in time you can change the orientation of your iPhone or iPod as you desire. Dash Race works for all orientations for these devices.

Think of a dash as being a short line, and there you are ;-)

The basics of Dash Race exist already for some decades, however the exact origin is unknown. You can find a lot of background information in a Wiki-entry on this topic.