The Pit Wall guide: how the game works.

A racing management game in pixel art. You are the pit wall: you pick the team, the drivers, the setup, the tyres and the moment of the stop. You never drive.

The game is watched more than commanded. The race runs on its own — you decide when to step in, and not stepping in is a decision too.

MENU → create your team → HUB
                        ↓
          race weekend (repeats 10 times)
                        ↓
      track briefing → qualifying → strategy → race → post-race
                        ↓
             season end → new season

The hub is your base between weekends. From there you open car development, driver training, the standings and the staff market — and from there you leave for the weekend.

What you actually decide:

What you don't control: a driver's talent never grows. The weather does what it wants. A development project can fail. The rivals have a pit wall that reasons like yours — and it doesn't wait for you to make a mistake.

Two modes. Career — full seasons, economy, development, standings, titles. The real game. Quick race — a single race with any team and drivers, no tokens and no consequences. It exists to try the simulation.

Language and platforms. Italian and English, following the system language. Runs on iPhone, iPad and Mac. Played in landscape: held vertically, the game asks you to rotate the device.

First choice: difficulty. It doesn't just change a few numbers — it changes which car you show up with.

The draft budget is the same for everyone: 25 tokens. What changes is the car underneath — and on Hard you feel the difference all season. The rival pit wall also reasons better: it re-evaluates strategy more often, spots smaller margins, and gets its estimates wrong far less.

The draft. With 25 tokens you buy two drivers, a design chief and a track engineer. What you don't spend stays in the bank as your starting budget, so going cheap on drivers is a legitimate strategy. Among the available drivers there is always a wildcard: a rookie whose stats you can't see. Cheap. Could be a phenomenon or a nobody — you only find out once they race. If you don't take them, a rival team does.

Sponsors. A title sponsor and a technical one. The title brings most of the money and gives you a seasonal objective; the technical brings less but adds an edge (tokens per race, morale, reliability).

The season. Ten races on ten different circuits, and the calendar order changes every year — no two seasons look alike. Every track has a character: base speed, tyre wear, error risk, rain probability, time lost in the pits. A street circuit forgives nothing and charges you dearly for every stop; a fast one lives on engine and slipstream. Points go to the top ten, as tradition dictates. Two standings: drivers and constructors. The constructors' one is yours — and it's the one the title sponsor watches.

Title fight. With a few races left and two or three drivers clear at the top, a title-fight status kicks in: a yellow lightning bolt next to their names. It's not just an icon — those drivers race more aggressively when close on track, gain morale every race, and in the decider the stakes are maximum wherever they stand.

Season end. Constructors' prize, title-sponsor bonus (if you hit the objective) and titles. The reigning champion stays written above the standings all of the following season, with a star for every career title. Then it resets: shuffled calendar, points zeroed, development budget full again, your drivers back to maximum morale. Whoever won is still ahead — but the edge isn't what it was, because the rivals worked all winter.

Saves. The career saves itself. One career at a time: starting a new one overwrites the current one, and the game asks before doing it.

Two per team. They're half the package: a strong car with the wrong driver doesn't win, and vice versa.

There's also a trait you don't see as a bar: how much a driver complains. A whiny driver fills the radio with reports, and it's on you to work out which ones matter.

Morale. Runs from 10 to 95. It rises with results above expectations and falls below them. Winning charges it, being beaten by your teammate burns, and the title fight keeps a driver fired up through the final stretch. High morale doesn't grant speed — it grants training points every race: slow growth you see at season end, not race end. Every new season everyone restarts at maximum. Winter wipes the long faces.

Training. Points accumulate race after race and are spent on four stats: consistency, tyre management, wet skill, reactivity. Not talent — that is what it is. You can also pay for a session with a trainer for one driver, once per weekend.

Aging. Every year everyone gains experience and loses some reactivity. A veteran reads the race better and makes fewer mistakes; a youngster reacts sooner. Neither is better in absolute terms.

Replacing a driver. From the hub you can release a driver at any time. It costs 4 tokens and a wildcard arrives instead: an unknown rookie, random stats, always low experience. Points already scored stay with whoever leaves and vanish from the drivers' standings; the team keeps the constructors' points. It's a move for a season already compromised — or when you feel like gambling. Names never repeat: once someone has been through your career, they don't come back with another face.

How drivers spread across teams. At career start the strongest tend to land in the best teams, but not in single file. The market has its noise: some talent ends up in the wrong place, and every career starts with a different grid.

Two people, two different trades. Stars matter, but what really changes your day is the standout trait.

Design chief. Works at the factory, not at the track. Their stars raise the chance a development project succeeds and lower the risk at the test bench. Each has a speciality department (engine, aero, chassis, reliability, compound stability): projects in that department get more strokes of genius and fewer defects. Developing outside the speciality works, but pays less. Without a design chief projects still deliver — just much less.

Track engineer. The voice you hear in the race and at the setup bench. Stars decide how precise they are when they tell you something; the trait decides what they do better.

A one-star engineer doesn't lie to you: they stay vague. A five-star one gives you the exact notch and the exact lap. You feel the difference most in qualifying, where there's little time to figure things out.

The market. It moves between races: candidates change on their own. Hiring costs a one-off signing fee (roughly one salary) and replaces whoever is there — no need to fire first. Every staff member draws a salary charged every race, together with the drivers'. A five-star pit wall is paid all season, not just the day you hire it.

Four moments: briefing, qualifying, strategy, race.

Briefing. The track card: laps, reference lap time, tyre wear, error risk, time lost in the pits, rain probability, and two lines from the pit wall on what matters here. Reads in ten seconds and decides how you set up the rest of the weekend.

Qualifying. Three real-time sessions: Q1, Q2, Q3. After Q1 and Q2 the five slowest drop out; Q3 leaves ten fighting for pole. You don't drive the lap: you decide when to send the car out, on which tyre and with how much aggression. The rest is the driver, the setup and the traffic.

The setup. Four areas — aero, chassis, power unit, dynamics — five notches each. The right setup exists, it's different for the two drivers, and you never see it. Only two voices help you search. The driver reports a feeling: «it won't turn, I get to the corner and it goes straight». The more experienced and consistent, the more precise. A rookie often just names the track zone, and sometimes attributes to one area what they feel in another. The engineer reads the data: with few stars they say you're losing time but not where; with five stars they name the area and the notch.

When the two disagree, the CONFLICTING ADVICE signal appears. Neither is right by definition — it's the decision to make. You can ask for an extra analysis, which costs five minutes of session and clears one point: in a conflict it says who was right, otherwise it goes to the darkest area among those that matter on this track.

The work is never lost: setup and knowledge carry from Q1 to Q2 to Q3 — which is what lets a strong team use Q1 to learn instead of chasing the time. Something also carries between weekends: returning to a track you've raced starts you closer.

Tyre sets. Four sets per compound. Any set that goes past 10 laps becomes unusable — in the list you see it SPENT and it can't be fitted. Burn through every set of a compound and you don't go out on it again. The send-out button flashes in the final useful minutes: once the window closes there's no time to complete a valid lap, and sitting in the pits watching the clock isn't a choice — it's a distraction.

Pre-race strategy. Here you pick the starting compound and where the stops go, for each driver. On top is the pit-wall briefing: what's on track at the start (sky and water on the asphalt — two different things), where the race is heading, and the lap-by-lap forecast strip. The first six laps are visible; beyond that sits the question mark, and there the pit wall only commits as far as it's worth.

Three ready presets — Conservative, Balanced, Aggressive — differing in starting compound and how hard they push each stint. From there you can move the stops by hand. The graph below draws the predicted degradation: the red line is the critical zone, and a stint ending below it is a plan that won't hold. One stop is always mandatory: no compound covers the full distance.

Race. From here you watch. Your levers are each driver's pace, the pit call and the compound to fit. Everything else is the simulation — and the pit wall talking to you on the radio.

The heart of the simulation. Understand this chapter and you've understood the game.

No hidden thresholds: every compound has a performance curve that changes with the water on track. A soft on dry asphalt is unbeatable and on a half-wet one undriveable; the inter has its window and outside it wears fast.

Water on track, not the sky. Sky and asphalt are two different things — the most important distinction in the game. The sky has four states: dry, drizzle, light rain, heavy rain. The asphalt holds a continuous amount of water that chases the sky with inertia: it wets fast, dries slowly, and the cars running help dry the racing line.

It stops raining and the track stays wet for laps. That's why fitting slicks one lap too early is a disaster — and one lap too late still costs plenty. The crossover — the point where the slick outperforms the inter again — isn't a threshold written anywhere: it comes out of comparing the curves. Nobody announces it. The pit wall gives you clues; the rest you decide.

How a tyre wears. Condition runs 100 to 0 and drops every lap. How fast depends on:

• > the track — the loudest voice
• > the compound — a soft wears far more than a hard
• > the pace — pushing costs more than linearly
• > the driver — a good manager stretches stints considerably
• > a tyre outside its window — an inter on a drying track destroys itself

A worn tyre is slower and more dangerous: error risk grows with degradation. Below a certain threshold the stop is no longer a choice. Normally a tyre is run down to 15-25% of remaining life. Changing at 50% is throwing away half a set — and the game never suggests it.

The forecast. Before the race you see the weather strip: the first six laps are data, beyond that a question mark. The pit wall adds a reading in words — stable, improving, rain coming — and how much they commit depends on your engineer. What's inside the strip is certain and stated as certain; what's beyond the horizon is a forecast, and a mediocre engineer stays vague.

In the race. The pit wall warns you when the track changes phase, when tyres hit crisis and when the plan needs a rethink. With a tyre-reading engineer, after a lap where your two drivers ran different compounds you get told which one is performing better — with real times to back it.

The weather gamble exists, for you and for the others: fitting the tyre that's wrong for now but right for five laps from now. When someone tries it the game narrates it — and a few laps later it says whether it paid.

Your three levers:

• > Pace. Five levels, conservative to "on the limit". Pushing gains tenths and costs tyres and risk; managing does the opposite. There's no right level — there's the right level now.
• > The stop. You call it, whenever you want. The car comes in at the end of the lap.
• > The compound. What you fit at the stop, chosen in the moment.

What the pit wall tells you. The feed narrates the race: overtakes, mistakes, weather, others' stops, your drivers' radio. It's not a full chronicle of twenty cars — that would be unreadable — but a selection of what concerns you or changes the race.

Tapping one of your drivers opens the panel with recent times, tyre state and the projection of a stop now: how much you lose, where you rejoin, how long the new compound would last. With a strategy-trait engineer the numbers are tight; with a mediocre one they're a wide fork. You can also watch a rival: their strategy seen from outside, their recent laps, and your pit wall's (uncertain) reading of their tyres.

The rival AI. Every rival pit wall does its own maths: it weighs the possible strategies — stay out, stop now, go long, attack at the end — and picks the one promising the best time. It doesn't cheat: it uses the same tyre physics as yours. But it gets things wrong like a real pit wall: estimates are imprecise, and how imprecise depends on driver experience and difficulty. On Hard it re-evaluates the race three times as often and spots much smaller margins. Plans change when the race changes: rain, Safety Car, tyres in crisis.

Neutralisations. Safety Car and Virtual Safety Car slow everyone and make stopping much cheaper. Nobody stops "because there's a Safety Car": you stop because with reduced pit loss the maths adds up. But it adds up often — and whoever was on the fence takes advantage.

Incidents and failures. Driver errors, contacts, mechanical failures. Probability grows with rain, with tyres at the limit, with aggressive pace and with a car already damaged. One mistake can cost two tenths or the whole race. Reliability is a department like the others: you develop it — and whoever neglects it finds out the worst way.

Chequered flag. The post-race lines everything up: your two drivers, the finances item by item, the updated standings, the morale that shifted — and, if a project closed that weekend, the development package that just landed on the car.

The car doesn't improve on its own: it improves if you open a project, follow it at the test bench, and things go well.

Five departments. Engine, aero, chassis, reliability, compound stability. The first three weigh on pace differently depending on the track: engine rules on fast circuits, aero where you corner, chassis a bit everywhere. Reliability keeps failures away. Compound stability makes the tyres less unpredictable.

Opening a project. You pick the department, the direction and the duration. The three directions change the ratio between how much you can gain and how likely you are to gain nothing:

Two durations: a short program closes in a few races and brings less; a long one takes half a season and brings more. The long one can also die — but rarely. Every project has a reference driver who follows it at the bench and puts something of their own into it — paying in morale.

The test bench. Between races you can do a bench run. Every run adds progress to the project bar but raises the risk of the next one: the car has been stressed, and at some point something breaks. The game always tells you, before you press, how risky the next run is and how much it pays. Stopping in time is half the craft.

What can go wrong:

• > bench failure — the project stops and restarts, losing the work done
• > bar not completed — a smaller package than expected arrives
• > defects — the department improves but carries a problem that weighs elsewhere
• > side effects — a leap in one department can take something from another

When a project finishes, the post-race opens a dedicated card: what happened, how much the department rose, the overall before and after, accumulated defects, the bench's discoveries. Technical discoveries: every now and then the bench produces something you weren't looking for — a discovery that grants a lasting edge. You can't schedule it; it happens.

The seasonal cap. Every department has a growth limit per season. It keeps a team from spending the year hammering the same department to 99, and leaves something to do in later years. As you approach the cap the game tells you — points beyond the limit are lost.

The rivals. They develop too, and not all the same way. Whoever is behind grows faster than whoever leads — the rubber band exists and it's deliberate. But it's not orderly growth: every team draws a season form at the start of the year — some find the key, some lose the year. Some development takes the wrong road and makes the car go backwards.

Every team also has a home department — the one it knows how to work — and it insists on it for years. That's where cars with a character come from: an engine team flies on fast tracks and suffers in town. Once in a while a team changes philosophy, but it's rare. The result: the grid order really moves. Whoever leads in year one isn't guaranteed to lead in year five.

One currency: tokens. They show top right in the hub and pay for everything — salaries, development, the market, driver changes.

What comes in:

• > Title sponsor. The bulk of income. Each is a different compromise: one pays a lot fixed and no extras on results, another pays little fixed and only repays if you run up front. All give a seasonal objective — hitting it is worth a year-end bonus.
• > Technical sponsor. Less money, but an edge: tokens per race, driver morale, extra reliability.
• > Race prize money. Every race, for each of your cars in the top ten. Grows steeply toward the podium — and it's leaner on Hard.
• > Podium bonus. A straight extra for each of your drivers on the podium.
• > Constructors' prize. At season end, based on your standings position.

What goes out. Salaries of the two drivers and two staff members, every race. Fixed operating costs. Development projects. Signing fees for mid-season hires. Driver changes. Salaries are the voice that never stops: a strong driver is paid ten times in a season, not once.

Staying afloat. On Easy the margin is comfortable and you can afford long programs. On Medium every choice has a real cost. On Hard the bank stays tense all season and one bad weekend bites immediately: fewer points, less prize money, less development, a car that falls behind. No difficulty bankrupts you by itself. But on Hard, finishing a season with two closed projects instead of five changes the year after — and that's where you see whether you managed well.