The Undercut: Racing Manager · published
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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
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
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.
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. 🏁