Lego Drome Racing Challenge

The Drome Racing Challenge is a different kind of multiplayer game, designed for LEGO.com. As a driver in the Drome, you collect and modify a set of custom racing cars, strategically preparing them to race. When you're ready to hit the tracks, your car faces off against another player's vehicle in an action-packed, anime-style cartoon that is different every time you play.

Get in on the high-speed excitement for free exclusively at lego.com. 

Source: Wayback Machine - Gamelab's Website

Are you ready for the drive of your life? When you become a Drome Racer, you'll get to join a racing team, customize your cars, and race them against other players. If high speed and extreme danger are too much for you, play it safe and steer clear. Otherwise, see you in the Drome.

Source: Wayback Machine - DRC Login Page

And what's this Drome Racing thing all about?

The Drome Racing Challenge is a different kind of
multiplayer game, designed for LEGO.com. As a
driver in the Drome, you collect and modify a set
of custom racing cars, strategically preparing
them to race. When you're ready to hit the tracks,
your car faces off against another player's
vehicle in an action-packed, anime-style cartoon
that is different every time you play.

Are you ready for the high-speed excitement of the
Drome Racing Challenge? Head to
http://www.lego.com/racers/challenge to take part in
the action!

Source: Wayback Machine - 2002 Gamelab Press Release

The Lego Drome Racing Challenge was Macromedia Flash game developed by independent game studio Gamelab for Lego.com and released in March of 2002. It lasted until April of 2017 when a game-breaking bug caused Lego to delete the game entirely [1]. Not to be confused with Lego Drome Racers which was a console game from the same era but wildly different than the web version. Gamelab also developed Lego games such as Junkbot, Worldbuilder, Spybotics, and others which were on the website at the time. Gamelab went defunct in 2009 and its assets were acquired by Arkadium which specializes in interactive website content [3].

Closure

For five years the Drome Racing Challenge has run its course - and we know how many people enjoyed playing it! Lately, however, there has been an alarming amount of hacking incidents which spoils the fun for all who play fair.So, the time has come to retire the Drome Racing Challenge and focus on creating a new gaming experience for you Racing fans. Thank you for playing over the years!

Source: Wayback Machine - Lego.com Game Closure

Brickwiki

BrickWiki.info was the best resource for information about DRC including team names, tracks, and some unsourced commentary about rivalries but unfortunately as of November 2019 it appears to be offline. You can access a Wayback Machine archived version of it here 

Lego Message Board

The forum as it appeared on October 10th, 2008 [2]

Most interpersonal communication about the teams and the game took placed in the Lego Message Board. Teams communicated in mega threads.

July 2018 Email to the Developers at GameLab

I managed to track down the people who built the game for Lego and contacted some of the old members of it.

Nat,
Thanks for your email to Frank. He forwarded it to me and I'll try and answer your questions. I was one of the founders of Gamelab and worked on most of our LEGO games.

1. Do you have a copy of the code anywhere or a compiled version? I would love to skim through it even if it doesn't hardly work at all. Even some of the assets would be an incredibly nostalgia trip for me
4. Does Arkadium own the rights to all your guys' games after GameLab went defunct?
We don't unfortunately have copies of the code we can distribute. In the case of games like our LEGO games, LEGO still owns the rights to the games. Arkadium only owns our old website domain, but nothing else.
2. How did it get started? Did Lego contact you guys with an idea or did you guys pitch it to them?
3. What caused the game to shut down?
In the case of Drome Racing Challenge, they brought us the basic idea of a multiplayer online racing game and we shaped it into the final game. I'm not sure why LEGO decided to take the game down but they tended to cycle out games that no longer were attached to their current products. So after they discontinued the toys connected to DRC, they eventually closed down the game.

Glad you enjoyed the game and hope this helps!
-eric 

Sources

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20130710224422/http://brickwiki.info/wiki/Drome_Racing_Challenge

[2] https://web.archive.org/web/20081010053326/http://messageboards.lego.com:80/en-US/showforum.aspx?ForumID=1001

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamelab