v0.5.2 — The Development Ladder, Weekend Loadout, and Pre-Season Testing
The Undercut: Racing Manager · published
v0.5.2 — The Development Series, Weekend Loadout, and Pre-Season Testing
0.5.1 gave the calendar a world to live in. 0.5.2 gives the championship a ladder — and it lands eleven days before Early Access on September 3.
⭐ The PFS Development Series
Two feeder series now run underneath the Prime Formula Series. They are not playable yet, but they are genuinely racing. PF2 "Prime Formula Challenge" — the step below the championship. International, 18 and over, 12 teams of two drivers plus a reserve, 16 races, a spec V6. PF3 "Formula Development Series" — where careers start. 16 to 18 years old, 10 teams, 12 races, a spec I4, no pit stops, every part frozen to one specification. Each has its own qualifying format, tyre rules and points scale. They run alongside your season: results, standings, poles, retirements, tagged news. Champions are crowned at the rollover, seasons are written into driver palmarès, and every seat is refilled. The world is shared, not parallel. A brand backing a feeder team is unavailable to PFS teams that season. Drivers carry ambitions by tier — a modest driver targets a feeder seat, so a PFS offer above his sights closes more easily. Academy loans. A feeder team will occasionally ask to field one of your academy prospects for a season. Accepting seats him in the series, pays your academy a contribution every GP, and buys him real seat time — worth 5% faster development than anything the academy can simulate.
🧳 Weekend Loadout
The weekend now starts before the weekend. A new screen opens ahead of practice: choose how many cars travel — two, or three with the mule — and which spares make the truck. Fitted parts travel with their cars; spares only if you take them. The choice genuinely locks the weekend: no purchases, no sales until the race is done. A broken front wing is now a pit stop, not a retirement — provided you packed a spare.
🔬 Pre-Season Testing
The moment your cars are built and fitted, the team heads to a testing day on a circuit drawn from this year's calendar. It is a real free practice session — run plans, development programmes, trait discovery, genuine part damage — with no qualifying or race after it. Your chief engineer briefs you before and reports after. The Development phase will not close until you have run it.
🏭 The Test Track
A new R&D tab holds a standing run plan for the development car, driven by your reserve on the team's own test circuit. It re-runs every Grand Prix weekend until you change it. Laps accrue trait-discovery mileage, and Development runs raise a part's potential. It is not free — the programme reserves a share of the Engineering pool proportional to the kilometres you plan. One bar, one truth.
📏 Regulations & Records
Pluggable regulation packages — classic top-6 points (10-6-4-3-2-1) is now the default
107% qualifying rule is active — too slow and you don't start
Country pages with national halls of fame, motor manufacturers, and circuits
PFS hall of fame counts PFS results only — feeder championships no longer inflate senior records
Records survive retirement instead of vanishing with the driver
⚖️ Balance
Mistakes recalibrated on a real season-one save. Expect 2–5 crashes and 6–13 spins per race now, down from 8–10 crashes
Sponsor Income Spread slider — headline brands pay disproportionately more
Team renown finally matters — reputation feeds prestige, which drives driver acceptance, AI negotiation order and academy signings
Smarter AI money management — teams trim facilities before reaching crisis
🖥️ Interface
Timing tower redrawn — garnet position plate, team colours, pit-stop count column
Simulate screen rebuilt — status gutter, full names, gaps refresh per sector like a real timing screen
Contextual help — a book button in every app opens that screen's wiki page
Decision mails stay in your inbox showing what you chose
Next GP blocked if you have unanswered offers waiting
🐛 Fixed
Closing the window now saves the career — Alt+F4, title-bar X and Steam Exit no longer drop your progress
Loading a career could freeze and drive the machine out of memory
Weekend Loadout no longer skips the season's first GP and pre-season test
Seven screens showed a hardcoded year instead of reading the mod calendar
Academy loan income now appears in Finance with its own section
Improve tab advertised the wrong reliability cost — by a factor of four
Worn parts warn before they ruin a weekend
Stuck negotiations self-heal when a sponsor signs through another channel
Steam Deck: podium, ceremony and country screens fit the display
📝 Also New
A player wiki covering every career screen, app and tab — with real formulas, cross-linked — now reachable from inside the game at the-undercut.com/wiki.
September 3
Early Access opens at 9:00 CET, at $14.99 — with a –12% launch discount for the first seven days. Until then, the free demo tracks the latest build. Play the Updated Demo · Wishlist the Full Game · Join Discord See you on the grid. 🏁