Suppliers | The Undercut Wiki

Suppliers provide the three consumables your car can’t build in-house: Engines, Tires, and Fuel. Each category has its own pool of brands, its own stats, and its own contract economics.

The Three Categories

Category	What it gives you	Where the brand pool comes from
Engine	Power on straights, engine-component fiability, engine endurance (km lifetime)	Curated motorist pool — real-feel branded engine builders, country-tagged
Tires	Grip in corners, tire wear rate, heat tolerance	Random brand-name generator
Fuel	Per-lap fuel consumption	Random brand-name generator

Brakes used to be a fourth category but were folded into the Handling infrastructure department — there’s no brake supplier any more.

How the Pool is Generated (start of career)

Engine suppliers — the Motorist Pool

The game ships a flagged list of engine brands (Italian, French, German, Japanese, British, Spanish, Swedish, etc.). At new-career creation time:

Every brand is given a randomised power (1–100) and reliability (1–100) rating, biased by the brand’s home car_market (DE/JP/US start higher on average).
From this list, 4–9 brands are made available to teams this season — distribution heavily weighted toward 5 (mode):
- 4 → ~18% of careers
- 5 → ~32% (most common)
- 6 → ~23%
- 7 → ~14%
- 8 → ~9%
- 9 → ~5%
Country diversity cap: at most 2 motorists per country in the pool, so a single nation never monopolises the field. Brands without a country tag are skipped entirely — every supplier you see in-game has a national identity.
Selection is biased by car_market + a wide noise term (60 points), so a French/Italian/British engine has a real shot of being top of the field even when DE/JP brands are statistically strong.

Tire & Fuel suppliers

A fresh batch is rolled at career start: 4–8 suppliers per category with random brand names, random origin (weighted by country car-market), random budget/size ratings, and random stats.

Supplier Stats

Stats sit on a 1–10 scale. Higher is better in every case.

Engine — `EngineSupplierStats`

Stat	What it does in-race
`base_power`	Sets the engine part’s `current_perf` — straight-line speed, accelerating-zone bonus
`base_endurance`	Engine wear distance (km before damage starts)
`base_reliability`	Multiplies engine `fiability` — fewer failure rolls, less heat damage
`base_potential`	Cap on how much the engine part can be improved via R&D

Tires — `TireSupplierStats`

Stat	What it does in-race
`base_performance`	Tire grip — corner speed, mechanical grip across all zones
`base_endurance`	Wear distance — how many laps before the cliff
`base_reliability`	Tire fiability (lower puncture/blowout risk on damaged tires)
`heat_resistance`	Wider optimal-temperature window — harder to overheat on push laps or in hot conditions

Fuel — `FuelSupplierStats`

Stat	What it does in-race
`base_consumption`	Per-lap fuel rate — higher rating = better efficiency = lighter fuel load possible

Supplier Profile — Other Fields

Beyond stats, each supplier offer carries:

Field	Range	Meaning
`budget_rating`	2–7	Brand’s market budget — drives the contract money
`size_rating`	2–6	Operational scale — affects acceptance odds and stat variance
`origin`	country name	National identity (engines: from the brand, others: random weighted)
`min_reputation`	5–30	Your team’s reputation must be ≥ this before they’ll talk to you
`base_acceptance`	0.30–0.75	Probability they’ll accept a stock offer (Partnership lower, Client higher)
`duration`	1–3 seasons	Contract length
`primary_objective`	varies	Bonus payout / fiability boost trigger if you hit it
`secondary_objective`	optional	Smaller bonus, ~33% of suppliers have one

Contract Types

Each supplier has a preferred contract type rolled at generation. Negotiation pre-fills with their preferred tier; you can flip it but expect a bigger acceptance hit.

Partnership (the supplier pays YOU)

The brand is happy to ride your team’s image. They cut a cheque per GP in exchange for logo space and exclusivity.

Engine partnership: 60K–350K × budget multiplier per GP
Tire / Fuel partnership: 20K–110K × budget multiplier per GP
Engine deals always pay more than tire/fuel — a deliberate floor. Big-money partnership = big-name engine builder.
~30% of suppliers prefer Partnership.

Client (YOU pay the supplier)

The brand sells you their kit at retail. Used by less-prestigious or higher-stat suppliers who don’t need the exposure.

Engine client: pay 60K–350K × budget multiplier per GP
Tire / Fuel client: same range scaled per category
~70% of suppliers default to Client.
Client deals come with higher base acceptance (0.45–0.75 vs. 0.30–0.50 for Partnership).

The exact partnership bands are clamped on save load and on offer creation, so old saves won’t show inflated values from a previous balance pass.

Reputation Gate

Every supplier has a min_reputation you must beat before they’ll consider you. Reputation comes from:

Your starting budget tier (Small=30, Medium=50, Large=70)
Your Marketing department level (Marketing 1 → +0, Marketing 10 → +4)
Race results, season standing, championship wins

A high-prominence engine builder is gated harder than a low-tier fuel sponsor — expect to grow into the top contracts.

Negotiation

Each supplier offer can be tweaked along three axes:

Money per GP — slide up/down vs. their stock offer; higher = lower acceptance
Duration — 1–3 seasons; longer = lower acceptance for a top-tier supplier (they want flexibility)
Contract type — flipping their preferred type costs acceptance probability

The acceptance probability you see updates live. Hit “Send Offer” and you get a yes/no back; a refusal locks the supplier out for a few weeks.

The Settings/Career sliders let you tweak how fierce negotiations are if you want a calmer career.

Happiness & Bonuses

Once signed, a supplier has a happiness bar (0–100) that drifts based on race results vs. their objectives.

Hit the primary objective at season end → bonus payout + fiability boost on the matched component
Miss the primary → happiness drops, mid-season offers tighten
Hit the secondary → smaller bonus, but stacks
Engineering level caps how much fiability can be permanently locked in across seasons

Happy suppliers are more likely to renew on the same or better terms. Angry ones may walk at end of contract — cf. the e-mail tab for early-warning grumbling.

In Practice — Picking Your Suppliers

Engine is the single biggest performance lever — base_power directly drives the engine current_perf. Don’t skimp here even if the cheque is painful.
Tires — base_performance matters most for corner pace, heat_resistance matters more on dry/hot calendars (Bahrain, Phoenix, Mexico).
Fuel — only one stat (base_consumption); a top fuel deal saves enough fpl to run lighter strategies (1-stop instead of 2-stop on long calendars).
Check min_reputation early — a Large-budget team can pick whoever, a Small-budget team builds toward elite suppliers.
Engine country variety — each new career rolls a different motorist pool, so a French/Italian/British engine maker isn’t always available; it’s part of the career flavour.

Quick Reference