Sense
Seven rays measure the distance to the nearest wall, plus the car's own speed. That's the entire input eight numbers. No map, no racing line, no idea where the finish is.
generation
1
0 / 0 alive
Your turn. Arrow keys or WASD lift off and you'll coast, down to brake.
Same car the AI drives. Take your time; nothing times you out.
Decide
Those numbers run through a small feed-forward network and come out as two values: how hard to steer, and how hard to accelerate or brake. That network is the policy.
Score
Reward comes from passing gates in order, with a small bonus for carrying speed and a penalty for hitting a wall. It is deliberately sparse nothing tells the car how to corner.
Select
The whole generation dies, the best few are copied unchanged, and the rest are rebuilt by mixing two good parents and randomly nudging the weights. Repeat.