Mario Kart Wii Carrera Racing System Figure 8 Track with 1:43 Wild Wing Mario and Wild Wing Luigi

My 5 year old boy received this for his birthday and was really excited about it. I had tracks like this when I was a kid but they were usually oval tracks instead of this tight figure 8 type of track. I also briefly owned a "professional" slot car and "raced" at a local track for fun half a dozen times. The key difference is that any of the cars that I operated on a track with tight turns had a swiveling contact patch at the bottom of the car so that when the car was in a tight turn the electricity continued to be fed to the car. These cars have a simple strip of braided metal hanging from the car to pick up power from the track and it works fine until the car enters a corner. As a result the cars do NOT go around the track even in brand new out of the box state. I tried bending the contact strips in different directions and also fanning out the strips to no avail, this toy just doesn't work and I don't believe the one I received was defective. If for some reason this track worked I would still only give it 2-3 stars because it runs on 4 D size batteries instead of plugging into a wall like the tracks of childhood.