Engineering notes
Pit wall glossary
Racing managers assume you speak paddock. Here is the vocabulary, in plain words, with a note on where you’ll meet each term on our grid.
The car
- Setup
- The set of adjustments that tune a car for a circuit and the weather. Every game on our grid asks for one; iGP Manager’s Realistic Setups mode expands it to nine parameters.
- Wings and downforce
- Front and rear wings push the car into the road. More wing means more grip in corners and less speed on the straights. Finding the balance is half of most setups.
- Camber
- The tilt of a wheel seen from the front. A little negative camber helps cornering grip; too much wears the inside of the tyre.
- Toe
- Whether the wheels point slightly inward or outward when seen from above. It trades straight-line stability against turn-in response.
- Brake bias
- How braking force is split between front and rear. Too far forward and the car won’t turn; too far back and it gets nervous.
- Gear ratio
- How long or short the gears are. Short gears help acceleration, long gears help top speed on fast tracks.
- Affinity
- A term from IMoto’s rules: how well the bike’s components, tyres and rider suit each other. Changing a part can improve it or quietly make it worse.
The race
- Stint
- The stretch of laps between two pit stops, or between the start and the first stop.
- Pit window
- The range of laps in which a stop makes sense, given fuel, tyre wear and traffic.
- Undercut
- Pitting earlier than a rival so your fresh tyres gain time while they stay out on worn ones.
- Overcut
- The opposite: staying out longer, hoping clean air or a late weather change outweighs your older tyres.
- Tyre wear
- How quickly tyres lose grip over a stint. GPRO puts tyre wear data in front of you after every race for exactly this reason.
- Fuel load
- How much fuel you start a stint with. More fuel means fewer stops but a heavier, slower car.
- Safety car
- A neutralisation of the race after an incident. It bunches the field and can make or ruin a strategy; BATracer simulates it.
- Dirty air
- Turbulent air behind another car that reduces grip for the follower. iGP Manager’s Classic Mode is built around this effect.
- Wheel to wheel
- Racing in which cars actually fight for position on track rather than running a time trial. iGP Manager added it to its 3D races.
The championship
- Promotion and relegation
- Moving up or down a division at the end of a season. GPRO and Racing Boss are built around it.
- Parc fermé
- In real racing, the rule that freezes a car’s setup between qualifying and the race. In several games your qualifying setup carries over in the same spirit — IMoto, for example, uses your chosen setup automatically.
- Carset
- BATracer’s word for a race series with its own cars, calendar and rules — a grand-prix season, a GT challenge, an Indy 500 and so on.
- Sprint race
- A short race format. In iGP Manager, sprints are scheduled events you can drop into without joining a league.
- League
- A group of managers racing a full season together. In iGP Manager you can host one and set its schedule and rules.
- Wild card
- In IMoto, a once-a-season chance to enter a third rider in a race.
- Superlicense
- In My Racing Career, the name of the optional premium account. The publisher states it doesn’t improve driver performance.
- Supporter
- In GPRO, a player who funds the game through its support programme. The site mentions supporter-only liveries.
New to all of this? Start with the pre-season checklist, then pick a game from the grid.