R&D is where the car is built, mended, developed and replaced. It is not a single screen: it is nine tabs sharing one window with the Cars Overview page, and — more importantly — a small number of Work Unit (WU) pools that every tab spends from. Understanding the pools is 90% of understanding R&D; the tabs are just the shopfront.
How to open it
- Career sidebar / desktop → the Car icon (icon 10). That opens Cars Overview; every other tab in the bar takes you into the R&D screen.
- The hub’s two resource widgets (the hammer = Engineering, the flask = R&D) are clickable and route to the same app.
- Design-ready emails carry an Open R&D → Production button that lands directly on the Production tab.
- Between weekend sessions the game opens R&D in a stripped repair-only mode: the Repair tab alone, on a separate pool (see below).
R&D has no sidebar entry of its own — the merged Car/R&D app carries all of it.
The nine tabs
| Tab | Name | What it is for | Article |
|---|---|---|---|
| 7 | Car | The Cars Overview page (read-only spec sheet) | My Car |
| 3 | Inventory | Every part you own, per car; equip / sell | R&D — Inventory |
| 6 | Production | Turn a design (blueprint) into physical parts | R&D — Production |
| 0 | Repair | Mend race damage on fitted parts | R&D — Repair |
| 1 | Improve | Develop performance / reliability, incl. overdrive | R&D — Improve |
| 8 | Private Testing | The standing mule programme on your test track | R&D — Private Testing |
| 2 | Design {year} | Commission this season’s new parts + trait fixes | R&D — Design |
| 5 | Design {year+1} | Next-season car planner (regulations) | R&D — Design |
| 4 | Projects | Track and re-allocate every running project | R&D — Projects |
The two Design tabs are labelled with the actual calendar year of the season and the one after it (Design 1991 / Design 1992).
The two pools — hammer and flask
R&D runs on two completely separate WU currencies. They are never interchangeable and the app tells them apart by glyph.
Engineering pool — the HAMMER
The weekly workshop budget. Spends on Repair, Improve, the Design tab’s per-GP workload charge, and the Private Testing maintenance reserve.
pool = 50 + engineering_level × 10
+ season-break bonus (that GP only)
+ 5 per active supplier PARTNERSHIP| Engineering level | Base pool |
|---|---|
| 1 | 60 WU |
| 5 | 100 WU |
| 10 | 150 WU |
The pool is refilled to full at every post-race pass — leftovers do not carry over. Two events top it up on the GP where they fire:
| Event | Bonus |
|---|---|
| GP 5 — regulation package | base pool × severity (None/Small ×1, Medium ×1.5, Heavy ×2, Full ×3) |
| GP 10 and GP 15 — season break | base pool × 1 |
The bonus is carried in break_wu_bonus so the refill does not wipe it; the gauge’s denominator grows with it (that is why the bar reads e.g. 0/300 on a Full-regulation weekend).
R&D pool — the FLASK
The design capacity, spent per GP rather than as a lump.
capacity = 20 + rnd_level × 8| R&D level | Capacity |
|---|---|
| 1 | 28 WU/GP |
| 5 | 60 WU/GP |
| 10 | 100 WU/GP |
Every design or trait-fix project locks an allocation (WU/GP) out of this capacity until it finishes or is cancelled. In-season projects and next-year (N+1) projects draw from the same capacity. Free capacity = capacity − Σ allocations.
The Design, Design N+1 and Projects tabs show the flask bar (R&D pool, allocated/free). Every other tab shows the hammer bar. If you are looking at a bar that never moves when you queue repairs, you are on a Design tab.
The shared Work Order gauge — one bar, one truth
Below Repair, Improve, Private Testing and Projects sits a single Work Order panel. It is one build_work_order_html call with one set of numbers, so the three spending tabs can never disagree:
used_total / pool — Spent | Testing | Queued (repair + improve + design) | Free- Spent — WU already consumed this week (pool − remaining, minus the testing reserve).
- Testing — the standing mule plan’s weekly maintenance reserve, shown as already consumed. Reserved is consumed; it is subtracted from what Repair/Improve/Testing can spend, centrally, so all tabs agree.
- Queued — colour-split: orange repair, blue improve, purple design workload. Nothing is spent until you press Confirm All.
- Free — what remains after all of the above.
The bar recolours at 60% (amber) and 85% (red) utilisation.
Private Testing deliberately shows this same gauge plus one extra info line for the mule reserve. A dedicated second bar existed briefly and never moved when repairs were queued — it is not coming back.
Ordering of the post-race pass
The order matters and is fixed:
- Engineering pool refills to
50 + eng×10 + break bonus + partnership bonus. - Private Testing runs and debits its maintenance from that fresh pool. If the plan costs more than what is left, the programme idles (
IdleNoWu) and you get a mail. - The week’s work — everything you queue in Repair / Improve / Design — spends the remainder.
- R&D projects accrue their
WU/GP; completed designs deliver (email + blueprint). - Standing production orders arrive.
- AI teams develop.
Billing the mule against the previous week’s leftovers used to make it look free inside Improve; it now lands on the same pool you are about to spend. A maxed Improve queue can never starve the mule either — the next debit simply lands on the next refill.
The weekend repair pool
While a race weekend is live, inter-session repairs run on a separate, volatile pool:
weekend_repair_wu = (50 + engineering_level × 10) / 5| Engineering level | Weekend pool |
|---|---|
| 1 | 12 WU |
| 5 | 20 WU |
| 10 | 30 WU |
It is reset when practice completes and is not the annual pool — repairing between qualifying and the race does not eat your development budget. In this mode:
- Only the Repair tab exists; Confirm shows a Continue button instead of closing.
- The Private Testing reserve is never charged to this pool.
- No cash purchases — the “New $K” button is hidden, replaced by Swap spare (best race-ready spare that travelled).
The phase-6 WU lock
During the pre-season, R&D is locked to manufacturing while current_phase < 6:
- Only Inventory (3), Production (6) and Private Testing (8) are reachable. Clicking anything else lands you on Production.
- Repair, Improve, both Design tabs and Projects are drawn greyed out.
- No WU can be spent, so the pool arrives intact at the Development phase (phase 6).
In-season weekends run at current_phase = 7, where everything is unlocked.
Advanced
Confirm Allis a three-step transaction: repairs first (each re-checks the pool), then improvements (per-step, re-checking pool and ceiling), then the selected design project. A step that no longer fits simply stops — it does not fail loudly.- Queue validation is continuous. Every frame,
validate_queuedrops repairs on parts that no longer need it, andvalidate_improve_queuetrims counts downward until the total fits the pool. A stack of ×5 improves can silently become ×3 if you queue a big repair afterwards — read the Work Order line, not your memory. - Improve applies to the fitted parts of EVERY car, mule included (slot 2) — one WU cost, three cars upgraded. Repair is per-car.
- Partnership WU are real. Each active supplier partnership adds a flat +5 WU/GP to the pool (and +2 reputation). Two partnerships = +10 WU every weekend, forever. See Suppliers.
- Break weekends are the development windows. GP 5 at Full severity gives you
4× a normal weekof Engineering WU in one go. Plan the expensive overdrive pushes for those rounds. - Marketing does not feed these pools — it feeds the negotiation WU pool, which is a third, unrelated currency. See Marketing.
- Each tab has its own first-visit pointer walkthrough, re-openable with the gold ? button in the title bar.
Common mistakes
- Confusing the hammer and the flask. Improve says “no WU” while the Design tab shows plenty free — those are different pools. Engineering funds work on existing parts; R&D funds new designs.
- Treating “Testing” in the gauge as a display quirk. It is spent. If your mule plan reserves 30 of a 100 WU pool, you have 70 WU to work with, every single week.
- Hoarding the pool. It does not carry over — anything left at the post-race refill is gone. Spend to (near) zero every week.
- Queueing improves before repairs. The validator trims improves to fit, so a late repair silently shrinks your development. Queue repairs first, then improve with what’s left.
- Expecting to develop during pre-season. Before phase 6 the factory only manufactures. Budget your pre-season around Production, not Improve.
- Cancelling a project to “get the WU back”. Invested WU are lost; only the per-GP allocation is freed.
See also
- R&D — Inventory — what you own and what is fitted
- R&D — Production — blueprints into parts
- R&D — Repair — the WU cost of damage
- R&D — Improve — development and overdrive
- R&D — Design — new parts and next-season regulations
- R&D — Projects — allocation management
- R&D — Private Testing — the mule programme
- Infrastructure — Engineering and R&D department levels