Turbo Race WIP stages

Here are the "work in progress" stages of "Turbo Race", the third place winner in the 2014 Pixeljoint Space Olympics challenge.

Size is 320*256, 22 colors (challenge limit), made in 6 days using Ms Paint.

When making this piece I used no references at all, so I started with a rough sketch to determine how the pic will approximately look like:

Then I made a more clean version:

And a third version:

At this point the overall look of the picture has been decided and everything looks good.

So from this point forwards I just basically refine the picture one piece at a time: I make the asphalt, improve the sky, add shadows, finish the stadium, and add various small details.

And finally I decide that it's ready:

I guess it could have still been better of course, but back then I ran out of time and colors. But still I'm quite happy with it. :)