Fourteen preschoolers' judged which one of two cartoon hedgehogs would be the first to arrive at a finish line. There were three race conditions in a computer-based task involving the hedgehogs travelling at constant or accelerating speeds. Findings show children performed much worse for the closing-gap/overtaking condition which involved the rear hedgehog accelerating and overtaking the front one. The opening-gap and constant-gap conditions were high in performance accuracy. Findings suggest the use of a distance-based cue to direct judgements as this is can be used effectively for opening and constant-gap conditions but not for closing-gap. A second experiment which involved one group receiving an intervention found accuracy in the closing-gap condition to vastly improve. Findings suggest that children do use speed to guide their judgements and thus have a perceptual understanding for constant and accelerating motion. The reason for poorer performance in experiment 1 was due to children adopting an initial distance-based understanding to guide their decisions about the race. This in turn caused them to focus on areas of the race which only gave information on the distance between the winning hedgehog and the finishing line causing resource limitations in perception of a speed cue. Further research needs to address the effects of different interventions to see which are effective in enhancing the methods children for speed concept tasks.