In this authentic task, students take on the role of a racing team member trying to increase the horsepower of their racecar. For this task, students will determine the missing amount of horsepower from the engine, find the amount of horsepower provided by each replacement part, and find a combination of parts that can be replaced to recover the missing horsepower.

This project relates math to the real world in a way that is designed to drive student interest. The equation used is certainly simple, but the point is as much to start training students to organize their thoughts, work via tables, and see math as something that can be used to solve problems as it is to introduce them to using equations.