The Undercut is a 1990s-era Formula racing manager set in an alternate motorsport universe. You take charge of a race team — hire drivers, sign sponsors, court suppliers, develop the car between weekends, and call the strategy from the pitwall on race day.
This page is the bird’s-eye view: what the game is, what a typical session feels like, and where to go next in the wiki.
What you do
You are the team principal. You don’t drive; you build the team that drives well. Across a season you’ll:
- Sign drivers — two for the race seat, optionally a reserve. Their stats, personality, and stamina shape every lap of every weekend.
- Sign sponsors — they pay the bills. The bigger the brand, the bigger the cheque, the bigger the reputation gate.
- Sign suppliers — engine builder (the biggest perf lever), tire maker, fuel partner.
- Manage infrastructure — 7 departments level 1–10, each one buys you something different in performance or income.
- Run the R&D shop — between weekends, repair damage, improve weak parts, design new ones. Work Units (WU) cap your weekly throughput.
- Plan the weekend — practice plan, qualifying runs, race strategy, tire compound choices, fuel loads.
- Call the race — change engine maps, lift & coast, push through dirty air, issue team orders, time the pit stop.
- Read the calendar — 16-ish GPs across dry and temperate climates, each with its own circuit profile, top-speed character, tire-wear severity.
If real motorsport management appeals — long-term planning hidden inside short-term race decisions — that’s the loop.
A typical career session
Career Hub (desktop)
↓
My Team / Calendar / Finance / Drivers / Suppliers / Sponsors / Email / News
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Choose: "Next GP →"
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Practice Plan — set focus areas, run sims, get a setup baseline
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R&D / Repairs — between practice and qualifying: spend WU, fit fresh parts
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Qualifying Plan — 2-4 runs, hot-lap counts, tire compound + fuel load
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Qualifying Session — 30-min headless or watched, you set strategy live
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R&D / Repairs — between quali and race: last-chance tuning
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Race Run Plan — pit strategy A/B/C, tire sequence, fuel target
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Race Sim — 60–90 min real-time at 1× (skippable), starting lights, full sim
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Podium Scene — top 3 celebration if applicable
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Race Debrief — results, championship update, prize money, repair triage, sponsor objectives
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"Next GP →" — back to the hub for sponsor/supplier negotiations, finance, news, e-mailA rookie career typically takes 4–6 hours of real time per season at default speeds; experienced players push through faster by skipping practice and watching qualifying / race at higher sim speeds.
What’s under the hood (1-page summary)
This is a simulation-first racing manager — under the UI is a rich 12-phase race tick that models:
- Per-tick physics: lateral G, friction circle, brake/steer authority, tire load
- 22 cars on track, each with their own stats, car components, fuel, tires, AI personality
- AI race director: every car runs an engine-map / lift&coast / overtake-push / pit-strategy decision module each tick
- Mistakes (Lockup / Wheelspin / Spin / Crash) driven by driver consistency vs. tire temp vs. mental pressure
- Mechanical failures with progressive power loss + commentary warnings
- Yellow flags + Safety Car with realistic deployment, queue, and restart phases
- Side-by-side resolution at every braking zone — no more cars stuck in parallel for a full lap
- Crash physics in 2D with debris, particles, recovery, and rejoin
The wiki you’re reading stays at the strategy level — it tells you what to do, not how the physics integrators work.
Game modes
Career
The main game. You start a team, pick a budget tier (Small / Medium / Large), choose a country, name the team, get a starting roster of suppliers and sponsors, and play through full seasons.
| Budget tier | Starting reputation | Starting budget | Driver pool quality |
|---|---|---|---|
| Small | 30 | Tight | Mostly rookies |
| Medium | 50 | Comfortable | Mid-tier |
| Large | 70 | Spacious | Top-tier available |
(Replays — abandoned)
Earlier builds shipped a replay recorder. The feature is being retired — the cost of carrying every snapshot for binary back-compat outweighed the value relative to live re-watch (mid-race rewind via the data center).
What sets each weekend apart
Every GP is generated from a circuit profile that controls:
| Trait | Affects |
|---|---|
| Total length (target distance) | Race lap count |
| Number of corners | Lap time, mistake exposure |
| Top-speed character | Engine vs. corner-speed payoff |
| Climate (Dry / Temperate) | Tire heat-resistance importance, visual preset (sand / grass) |
| Pit-lane geometry | Pit-loss seconds, pit-strategy attractiveness |
| Track evolution rate | How fast rubber builds — affects out-laps, late-race grip |
So Bahrain (dry, long straights) and Monaco-equivalent (twisty, low rubber) play very differently — the same car/driver pair will have wildly different result variance.
Where to go next
| You want to… | Read |
|---|---|
| Understand sponsor / supplier money | Sponsors · Suppliers |
| Decode part damage and repair | Parts, Damage & Wear |
| Learn driver stats | Driver Stats Explained (coming) |
| Master pit strategy | Pit Strategy Plans |
| Read the calendar with intent | Track Traits |
| Grasp the personality behind each driver/team | Driver Traits · Team Archetypes (coming) |
| Tune the sim for your taste | Settings → Simulation Sliders |
The full table of contents lives on the wiki index.
Design principles (so you know what to expect)
- Numbers should mean something: every stat 1–20 (drivers) or 1–10 (suppliers/parts) maps to a real in-race effect.
- Stats blunt RNG, they don’t replace it: a CON 20 driver still spins occasionally; they just spin half as often as a CON 5 driver under the same pressure.
- Strategy beats hardware most of the time: a balanced 1-stop with the right pit window can beat a faster 2-stop. The sim rewards thinking.
- No hand-holding alerts: the game tells you what’s happening (commentary, telemetry, e-mail) but rarely tells you what to do. Your call as principal.
- Fail-safe save: the career is auto-checkpointed before each phase transition. If a weekend goes wrong you can roll back without losing the season.
Minimum learning path for a new player
- Start a Medium-budget Career — read the e-mail, click through every desktop icon once.
- Sign 2 sponsors and 3 suppliers (engine + tires + fuel) before the first race.
- Run a full weekend at default speed; watch the race; read the debrief carefully.
- After the first race, queue up your R&D repairs before designing anything new.
- By GP 5 you’ll have a feel for the cadence — that’s when serious strategy choices start paying off.