In the game, they first appear in the cut-scene for Off Road Race 2, where some of Chick's students went into the MotorCo. building in Autovia, and came out the other side as VINs. Then, they appear in basically every race after that. In Sprint 2, all your opponents are VINs. However, unlike Candice, El Machismo, and Stinger, they didn't apologize to Lightning McQueen for how they behaved, probably because they are robots, and they would probably only switch sides if they're reprogrammed to.