Hello! TP-eve is upon us (sorry). The largest update I have done to this game yet, 0.99.5, will be coming soon to Steam tomorrow morning, on both windows, and if my tests are successful, mac for the first time out of beta! This includes audio, major regulatory additions, content additions, a complete rebuild of most UI's, and so so much more. This represents a MASSIVE step, or leap, into the game I want it to be. I will be continuing to work on optimizations and follow up patches for this version throughout next week, as issues are bound to come up, even with a successful 1 week beta program.

Team Principal — Comprehensive 0.99.5 Patch Notes

This is a major update to both Formula and Oval racing, with expanded race simulation, regulation governance, car development, tyre suppliers, career management, UX, audio, Steam Workshop integration and performance improvements. This represents a close to doubling of the game by way of size, and over 100k lines of code. This has been an immense push by us, and we hope this new game serves everyone well. This update will be live sometime tomorrow morning. Please forgive me for using AI to structure SOME of these patch notes, I couldn't do so by hand.

ADDITIONS/IMPROVEMENTS

Formula Regulations, Calendar & Championship Rules

• Regulation votes: Introduced a Formula regulation-governance system, separate from chassis-development resets and engine resets, with rule proposals decided through team voting or historical scripts.
• Historical regulation schedules: As a contrary to regulation voting, mods can opt to script rules for particular seasons, including Season 1, to simulate a accurate historical universe.
• Team ballots: AI teams evaluate nearby rule alternatives and explain their choices. Changes need a strict majority, ties preserve existing rules, and majority owners may direct subsidiary-team votes. ALL ai votes are driven by their circumstances. Some votes may be split, some may be 10-0.
• Annual regulation reviews: Reviews use season evidence—reliability, points, spending, component allocation and caution frequency—to influence proposals.
• Flexible Formula team sizes: Teams can register one, two or three race cars, subject to the entry rules, plus one reserve driver. Entries keep consistent identities across drivers, events and seasons. You may have teams running different car counts at the same time in Formula.
• Full support for mixed-size grids: Garage capacity, physical parts, sessions, standings, history and editing now support one-, two- and three-car teams, including third-car results and equipment after season turnover.
• Calendar changes: Replaced the old simple calendar-swap event with Add Race, Remove Track, Replace Venue, Move Events and Do Nothing. Votes compare two feasible proposed actions, while historical scripts can specify changes directly.

• Car Profile regulations: Added moddable Slower, Standard and Faster physical performance baselines affecting cars physical corner speed, acceleration, braking and drag. Development and reference comparisons remain on Standard.
• Tyre Profile regulations: Refreshed compound-based wear multipliers for dry, intermediate and wet tyres, independent of supplier Durability. Previous supplier-wear offsets no longer double-count this rule.
• Pole and fastest-lap bonus points: Each can independently award one point to the driver and constructor. Both bonuses can apply together and are credited once when the race is committed; pole uses qualifying order before grid penalties, and retirement does not cancel an earned bonus.
• Guaranteed engine regulation resets: Modders can set a power threshold which, when met by an active supplier in Week 1, guarantees an announced minor, major or drastic engine reset for the following season instead of that year's normal random reset roll, to prevent engine snowballing.
• Scripted entry regulations: Maximum cars per team and fixed/variable entry counts can change through historical scripts, with registrations prepared for the new rules. These structural settings are not part of ordinary team votes.

Race Simulation, Incidents & Race Control

• Race performance modes: Added Full, Standard, Fast and Ultra simulation options. Faster modes trade some planning detail or responsiveness for simulation speed with limited differences in race outcomes. I highly recommend running one of these if the game stutters.
• Oval quick simulation: Completely rebuild an oval dedicated sector- and lap-based Simulate Race system covering pit stops, cautions, restarts, drafting, weather, equipment and scoring. Interactive Oval racing and Formula sessions continue to use their own unique separate simulation systems.
• Local yellow flags: Introduced incident-sized yellow zones in interactive Formula races, with localized slowing, overtaking restrictions, blue-flag suppression and map highlights. Other parts of the circuit remain green.
• Spectator Tools: For fun, added an optional, default-off spectator tool to deploy a Safety Car or force maximum permitted wind. This will be expanded upon in follow up patches.
• Opening-lap incidents: Added launch-distance and first-lap risk settings, plus multi-car chain reactions that can cause time loss, damage, spins and retirements to simulate real lap-1 pileups potentially occurring.
• Retirement recovery and escalation: Recovering retired cars under local yellows now takes a variable 2–5 laps; prolonged retirement yellows may escalate to a VSC when the active rules permit.
• Improved Formula traffic interactions: You will notice a LOT less blocking now, thankfully! Consistently so.
• More intelligent qualifying AI: AI drivers reassess improving weather, elimination cutoffs and rerun timing; pit departures are better spaced, and Q3 can support two attempts more often when there is sufficient time and tyre stock. A single reusable Q3 set still limits the driver to one run.
• Expanded Formula collision settings: Added separately configurable longitudinal/lateral contact distances and road-course collision probability per eligible simulated second, with consistent risk across simulation step lengths. Existing per-lap settings remain separate.
• Shared multi-car incidents: Cars involved in a single collision now share the same incident and caution decision, with individual consequences for driver relationships, confidence and morale.
• More flexible incident tuning: Removed the former 35% racecraft-related collision cap and introduced a better one that uses physical space to determine risk.
• Formula quick-sim tyre compliance: Added late-race pit-stop logic to satisfy an unmet two-dry-compound rule in the final five laps, using legal available tyres, honoring wet-weather exemptions and maintaining refueling targets.
• Pre-race tyre adjustments: Front and rear tyre pressures can now be changed before the race-start sequence begins.

Car Development, Research & Facilities

• Expanded technology research: The former driver-aid list has evolved into a ten-technology, five-level research system tech-tree, with individual unique effects, staffing, research time, costs, legality and fitted equipment. ERS remains a separate system.
• Historical technology availability: Added editable technology unlock years affecting player and AI research, production and fitting. Teams may start the game with certain techs already researched, moddable, of course.
• Default technology unlocks: Active Suspension (1982); Clutch/Anti-Stall and Cooling (1985); Survival Cell (1988); Traction Control, ABS and Qualifying Engine Mapping (1990); Active Aero (2005); Advanced TPMS and DRS Development (2010). All ten are editable.
• Aero Efficiency rating: Implemented aero efficiency as a used stat. Improved efficiency reduces high-wing straight-line drag penalties without creating extra low-wing bonuses or general cornering gains, and improves performance in high wind conditions (new feature).
• Fairer incomplete chassis projects: At Week 50, player teams receive a future chassis reflecting actual partial progress without paying unspent development costs. AI completes its design and pays remaining commitments once.
• Facility upkeep now matters to staff capacity: Reducing upkeep limits available design and technical personnel, and cuts that would invalidate current assignments are blocked with an explanation.
• More capable AI headquarters investment: Formula AI teams target HQ buildings more effectively.
• Focused simulated preseason testing: After Shakedown, player-controlled teams' AI drivers focus on programs more decisively so that they are more efficient at achieving goals.

Tyre Suppliers & Seasonal Testing

• Four tyre performance ratings: Replaced the single supplier Pace value with Lateral Grip and Longitudinal Grip for each compound, while retaining Durability and introducing Temperature Tolerance. A grip rating of 50 is neutral, each grip attribute affects its corresponding tyre physics.
• Five seasonal tyre programs: Introduced Cornering Grip, Traction & Braking, Durability, Thermal Stability and Wet-Weather Development. Suppliers choose a persistent passive priority based on their preferences, strengths and weaknesses; works teams can reinforce it or select another program.
• Global tyre regulation reset: When one active supplier reaches 100 in the same stat on all five compounds, next-season turnover resets all active suppliers to ratings of 40–60 across their compounds and attributes, before entrants are generated.
• Temperature Tolerance physics: This rating adjusts the width of a compound's optimal temperature window.
• Persistent tyre-testing progress: Only completed and settled sessions count; progress carries across saves, cannot be collected twice and locks the chosen program once testing begins. Completing objectives sends an email.
• New tyre-development structure: Replaced the former spending/split/upgrade system with the above supplier priorities and works testing.

Mods, Editors & Steam Workshop

• Steam Workshop support: Create, publish and update complete Formula or Oval season packs directly in-game, and discover, download, install and select subscribed Workshop content. Full support from season packs to asset packs to audio is supported.

Sponsorship, Finances & Ownership

• Complete sponsor refresh: Sponsors have morale you must maintain, negotiable season/race goals, and are significantly expanded as a system. Also enabled the ability to negotiate both current season contracts and next season contracts.
• Sponsor market cycles: Industry booms and recessions can now affect Season 1 after initial contracts are established, without prematurely ending valid sponsorship or ownership agreements.

Oval Racing & Junior Career Systems

• Oval junior-team management: Reworked how to manage owned junior entries, driver placements, ongoing and future development and finances.
• Expanded default Oval calendar: Increased the default season to 26 races and added 5 new tracks.
• Integrated Oval academies: Drivers at an owned junior team automatically join the parent academy in new careers.
• Automatic injury substitutions: Eligible healthy academy drivers can cover injured Oval starters, respecting reserve priority and preserving the original car number, equipment and crew chief. Junior seats and same-week junior/main participation remain intact.
• Junior Championship access: Made browsing junior series more accessible and easier to follow.
• Dedicated Oval collision rules: Oval races gain their own collision settings, rolling-start/first-lap risk and pack-related pileups. Collision damage affects the chassis.
• Two-wide Safety Car restarts: Cars catching the Oval caution queue assemble into stable two-by-two rows with configured spacing before the green flag, rather than randomly.
• Points for classified Oval DNFs: Retired drivers earn the points associated with their classified finishing position under the active scoring table, while remaining marked DNF.
• Oval car numbers: Car numbers now support 0–999, including selection, reassignment, race timing and persistent saves.
• Broader Oval sponsorship variety: Expanded junior and premier sponsor industries, with shorter fictional brand names while maintaining valid contracts.
• Created oval save editor.

Career Journalism, Records & Season Progression (BETA, off by default, toggleable in debug options)

• Procedural racing news: Added career-aware news editions featuring lead reports, secondary stories, analysis panels, press reactions, season digests and links to historical race results.
• End-of-season reviews: Formula and Oval now show championship winners, constructor engine suppliers, trophies, race winners, podium finishers and full standings before turnover, including late-calendar finales and save/reload support.
• Driver Rating History: Added annual ability tracking with seasonal overall changes and points, retained after retirement. Older saves begin recording from the current season.
• Four fictional media outlets: Autospin, PlanetGP, The Pace and RaceFanatics have their own visual identity and analytical, tabloid, feature or data-driven editorial voice.
• Broader coverage: Reports cover racing, qualifying, championship fights, teammates, rivalries, newcomers, reliability, engines, development, contracts, form, pressure, milestones and meaningful non-race weeks.
• Dynasties and records: Added coverage of win streaks, sustained success, dominant seasons, defending champions and approaching or achieved milestones.
• More varied reporting: New story structures, outlet-specific writing, scene-setting, quotes tied to actual facts and more varied secondary stories reduce repetitive news coverage.
• News reactions: News articles support interactive response actions whose completion is retained in career saves.

Engine Suppliers, Team Entries & Career Evolution

• Rebalanced new engine suppliers: Never-before-active independent or factory programs now enter using editable performance bands from Hopeless to World Beater, independent of annual budgets. Stats are generated against the developed, regulation-adjusted Week 1 incumbent field.
• Engine-entry specialization: New suppliers may choose Power, Reliability or Fuel Efficiency (+3 relevant rating points), Lightweight (−2 kg) or None.
• Strength-based Formula team debuts: New teams no longer use predefined stats, and can use eight entry-strength profiles, from Hopeless to World Beater, to generate viable chassis attributes, mass, potential and starting ERS relative to the existing grid to make modding easier.
• Scripted team departures: Added optional AI-team departures with season restrictions, player protection and minimum-grid safeguards. Departing teams release commitments to drivers, staff, academies and sponsors and receive achievement announcements.
• Protection for stranded engine customers: Customers of a departing works engine supplier receive a emergency replacement one-year deal if capacity allows; otherwise that supplier's departure is postponed.
• Consistent supplier continuity: Initial entry bonuses and stats are generated once per career, while returning/acquired suppliers keep existing technology.

Weather, Wind & Track Conditions

• Dynamic directional wind: Formula weekends now feature deterministic wind conditions that evolve roughly every simulated minute across 16 compass directions, indicating where the wind travels across the track map.
• Wind affects car performance: Headwinds, tailwinds and crosswinds influence drag, braking and cornering based on circuit direction. Aero Efficiency and driver Control also influence the response and risk. There is a lot under the hood here.
• Individual circuit climates: Formula tracks can now define their own wet-weather likelihood, including always-dry conditions. Bundled circuits include climate-inspired settings without changing already-generated weekends.
• Wind-aware strategy: Wind conditions are included in session physics, car-performance calculations and strategy forecasts. Calm weather or disabled wind preserves the neutral baseline.

Music, Race Audio & Immersion

• Added a full suite of race audio for formula, from the great folks as Virtual Racing Cars, including passbys, ambience, and so much more. These are incredibly high quality sound samples.
• Supplier-specific directional audio: Engine sounds can vary by manufacturer, including customers inheriting their supplier's audio. Left-to-right/right-to-left pass-bys use circuit geometry. This can be made moddable, for perfect historic accuracy.
• Background music playlist: Music continues through management screens, simulated sessions and results, but stops when entering interactive on-track sessions. Mods may add tracks.
• Interactive interface sounds: Added consistent clicks, sliders, back/close, confirmation, error and urgent-email alerts throughout management screens.
• Moddable sound packs: Season packs can provide custom playlists, track ambience, race/session sounds, supplier-specific clips, extra pass-bys and stereo direction variants. Shared UI sounds remain global.
• Oval-specific audio behavior: Default Oval sessions suppress unsuitable Formula pass-bys, engine loops and start/departure cues while retaining ambience and wheelguns. Appropriate replacement Oval engine sounds can be supplied by mods.

Drivers, Personnel & Contracts

• Player approval of contract offers: All accepted weekly driver offers now require your explicit approval, including uncontested offers. Multiple offers remain reviewable, but signing an incompatible full-time seat disables conflicting approvals while retaining Decline.
• More realistic regenerated drivers: Rookie talent, age and age-appropriate overall ability are rolled together, capped by potential, with accurate attribute totals and correct development stages for newly generated ten-year-olds.
• Rookie contract restrictions: Formula drivers with fewer than 10 main-series starts now accept contracts of at most one year at backmarkers or heavily indebted teams, and two years elsewhere.
• Driver retirement management: Authored drivers may be marked Active or Retired. Retired drivers retain their history but are no longer offered active contracts or market places.
• Oval staff careers: Added adjustable staff progression, decline, retirement, regeneration and career-history tracking.
• Driver-team relationship tuning: Decreased occurrence drivers hating their teams for no reason. Spiteful mfs.
• Short-term Formula reserve signings: Teams with a vacant current reserve seat may sign a reserve for the remainder of the season even when next year's reserve is already committed; contract dates and remaining duration are shown accurately.
• More stable driver identities: Drivers now support up to five traits and three personalities with duplicate/conflict prevention, legacy compatibility, stable editor selections and no unintended random placeholder traits.
• Retirement and expiry announcements: Midseason departures, contract-expiry retirements and season-turnover retirements are announced once instead of occasionally happening silently or generating repeats.

UI

Main Menu, Team Selection & Accessibility

• New unified launch screen: Combined the entrance screen and main menu into one modernized main menu.
• Interface color themes: Added varying color choices for UX filters if you hate the blue (i get it..i do). Requires restart.
• Optional first-career tutorial: Replaced the obsolete guided tutorials with a new introduction for both racing series with 16 topics across 20 cards, spotlighted dashboard controls, navigation, sound feedback and a guided Chassis visit. Guidance uses your team's actual circumstances; the option is off by default and excludes spectator mode.
• Team selection overhaul: Rebuilt team selection screen. Youll see.
• Additional font choices: Replaced consolas throughout, added JetBrains Mono, with confirmation when changing fonts.
• Hide control hints: Added an accessibility setting for players who prefer not to display interface hints.
• Refreshed series and season selection: Modernized Series Select, Season Select and Options with matching panels, selection colors and hover behavior.
• Safer dashboard exit: Escape and Back now show an exit confirmation while preserving save-before-exit behavior.
• Added misc. missing back buttons.
• Improved team artwork: Standardized car-art size and crop behavior, sharpened lower-resolution displays, enlarged engine/tyre logos and supported custom dashboard backgrounds.
• Larger dashboard and lineup branding: Enlarged the team logo and Team Lineup car art while keeping them within responsive screen boundaries.
• Sharper flags: Updated flag borders to fit visible artwork, including nonrectangular, wide and square flags, without damaging transparency or neighboring text.

Live Races, Weather & Telemetry

• New live telemetry workspace: Improved detailed race and added qualifying telemetry with live timing, car-speed comparisons, sector/lap histories, GPS, weather, strategy and driver controls.
• Live projected championship button in-race: A trophy button opens driver and constructor standings projected from the current running order, updating during the race.
• Redesigned weather forecast UI: Added temperature curves, track-wetness history, time-based weather icons, observed wind trends, direction arrows, compass and min/max/average summaries.
• Wind monitor: Added a movable toggleable wind panel with compass, speed, degrees, directional indication and an estimated lap-time impact, plus optional map arrows and a reopen button.
• In-session sound popup: A gear icon in Formula and Oval session/race views—including telemetry—lets you adjust Master Volume, Race Volume and race-audio mute without exiting.
• Telemetry appearance and preferences: Choose Pit Wall, Amber, Terminal, Violet or Crimson, optional auto-open, metric/imperial speed units and a settings cog. Choices persist between launches.
• Accurate speed comparison graphs: Compare selected drivers with rivals using full-speed physics profiles, with scrollable/wrapping rival selection for large fields. This is so crazy btw, one of my favorite features. You can see ashton darting hemorrhage 30kph on the straight straight by straight!
• More detailed tyre telemetry: Added estimated tyre life, warning colors, temperature and condition gauges and fuel-adjusted degradation displays.
• Interactive setup assistance: Added a docked mechanic-recommendation panel showing setup-skill bands, recommended setting ranges and an independent close action.
• Oval fuel and condition display: Updated the HUD with readable fuel bars, per-corner tyre wear, average tyre temperature, engine and chassis health.
• Local yellow presentation: Track sections under yellow show subtle line shading and persistent banners, supporting simultaneous affected areas and coordinated SC/VSC messages.
• Contextual telemetry help: Added help overlays with appropriate pause/resume behavior, with usable Pit Now, strategy and incident controls.
• Telemetry zoom and dense-grid layouts: Zoom the workspace and view large Oval pace matrices without dropping leading digits from timing values.
• Session pause and exit controls: Practice, qualifying and testing now offer visible P pause buttons, and practice exit has a confirmation dialog.
• Color-coded race events: Event headers now distinguish overtakes, fastest laps, retirements, spins, lockups, cautions, pits, weather, orders, damage and penalties while keeping text legible.
• Oval race timing numbers: Added a # column between position and driver in practice, qualifying and race timing, instead of showing a universal tyre-supplier column.
• Clearer setup grading: Setup grade now displays 85% standardized physics pace and 15% driver fit, with actual observed stint times shown separately. This should make achieving S much less impossible.
• Added icons throughout.
• Higher-contrast compound labels: Improved Soft/Medium/Hard/Intermediate/Wet letter readability against team-colored rows in live sessions.

Markets, Contracts, Finance & Team Management UIs

There is a lot of yapping in this section and a lot of AI over-explaining the changes I noted, and honestly, I would just see for yourself in game. Every single UI has been modified to some degree, at least, 95% of them. I would say around 70% of UI was rebuilt and modernized, in addition to some new ones, like a year-end summary.

• Development Centre redesign: Added department cards, a car overview, new chassis/project layouts and side-by-side performance/potential displays while preserving access to chassis history and concept reports.
• Rebuilt sponsor management: My Sponsors / Find Sponsors displays up to four active contracts in a 2×2 arrangement, with sponsor branding, income, relationships, goals and hospitality controls.
• Redesigned Finance Overview: Added year-to-date totals, improved weekly/YTD summaries and spending charts. Loan, bank and ownership views also have clearer valuation and borrowing information.
• Modern Formula Driver Market: Added compact search, sorting, filters, driver overall/talent indicators, traits and readable team-color identification.
• Modern Oval Driver Market: Added oval-specific discipline ratings, car numbers, actual vacancies and Oval traits with the same improved market navigation.
• Staff Market overhaul: Formula and Oval staff markets now have consistent tables, team logos, search, nationality/team filters and overall sorting. Signed staff show role-adjusted OVR colors for both seasons; spectator mode omits ownership-specific panels.
• Oval Academy screen: Rebuilt the academy around driver portraits, ratings, growth influences, recruitment, contracts and explicit current/future seat assignments.
• Oval junior management interface: Added clearly displayed junior-team finances, entries, driver assignments, pending/current development and a real candidate picker for team directors.
• Junior Championships hub: Added dedicated navigation to junior calendars, tables, race results, team rosters and series summaries.
• More informative supplier cards: Engine cards show current/next-year supply availability. Tyre, parts and engine negotiations show compact relevant performance bars and clearer controls.
• Trait & Personality Library: Added a scrollable 29-icon reference showing each trait or personality with a description. Matching icons appear in personnel and negotiation views.
• Supplier market refresh: Improved engine/tyre/parts cards, compound images and navigation; contracts for next season now display the actual future fuel supplier.
• Driver contract profiles: Modernized negotiation portraits and identity details, relocated driving style below traits and combined terms under Contract Terms, while retaining separate salary/bonus controls. Approach dialogs now scroll without hiding their action buttons.
• Clearer sponsor negotiations: Separated starting season, duration, package and performance conditions; added staff assignments, progress thresholds, bonuses/penalties, cash-flow previews and a distinct red Cancel control.
• Development UI improvements: The radar now shows a closed potential contour and shaded Grid Best reference. Added next-season configuration previews and current/future budget-effect summaries, with correctly colored changes and Baseline terminology.
• Technology Tree navigation: Zoom around the cursor, drag to pan and press Home to recenter. Locked technologies show grey cards, UNAVAILABLE labels and unlock years.
• Starting-technology editor: A dedicated roster-editor area lets modders assign None or Level 1–5 starting equipment to each technology, with separate Starting Years controls for unlock dates.
• Factory and garage navigation: Modernized production and fitted-part views, joined Formula factory/garage navigation, retained Oval's separate Factory and Warehouse destinations and updated private-testing shortcuts.
• Headquarters and budgeting: Refreshed facility, construction, finance and staff-allocation controls with clearer spacing, selection/hover states and large-text support.
• Performance and estimated-pace views: Refreshed ratings, pace charts, trends, driver/team comparisons, calendar selectors and supplier presentation without changing the underlying pace calculations.
• Contracts and Team Lineup: Improved contract amounts, expiry badges, summaries, vacant seats and roster readability. Team Lineup staff overall colors now match each job's rating range.
• Personnel Centre portraits: Driver cards show photos or consistent silhouettes, better-positioned names and contract text, and one clear rating display instead of repeated badges.
• Garage component controls: Engine inventories are sorted by condition; Fit Best still prioritizes performance, uses condition as a tiebreaker and respects allocation caps. Fitted-part lists have draggable scrollbars and hoverable navigation arrows so third cars and equipment remain accessible.
• Oval career guidance: Contract screens now warn about current vacancies and unfilled future crew-chief positions; help text refers correctly to Oval packages, entries and race purses.
• Improved Driver Market sorting: Adjusted columns, scrollbars and team colors, listed main-series teams ahead of junior teams and added double-click sorting on the driver column.
• More direct Contract Centre navigation: Team names now select a team directly, and driver-profile back buttons correctly identify the screen you came from, including Team Lineup.
• Driver approach rejection feedback: Failed driver approaches are now displayed prominently in red with reasons such as low prestige or an approaching final-offer deadline; failed approaches do not use staff negotiation slots.
• Manufacturable-chassis status: Future chassis show BUILDABLE once research allows manufacture and return to LOCKED when a new future-development cycle starts.
• Oval menu accessibility: Added Oval-themed market artwork, a scrollable Entries sidebar with large-text support, a simplified bottom navigation row and better Development hover feedback.
• Reconnaissance interface: Updated Recon displays, staffing selection and spacing while retaining existing reconnaissance decisions.
• Improved Parts Market branding: Restored proportional supplier-logo scaling and added branded example fuel/parts artwork for Mercurion Prime, Cosmocharge, Rosso Blend and Bleu Biofuel.

Race Results, Standings, History & Statistics

• Race results redesign: Results now feature a flag/circuit header with round, temperature and lap details, a gold/silver/bronze podium, full-width results and post-race driver/constructor standings.
• Modern championship tables: Reworked Formula, Oval and junior standings and graphs, including better result alignment, pole markers, single-entry constructor rows and points placement on shorter calendars. Implemented a "modern" coloring set, wiki-style, and preserved the classic game feel as well.
• Modern Season History: Archived seasons history have also been updated.
• Year-end review presentation: Added a responsive, hover-enabled season-finale screen with branded champions, trophies, winners, podiums and complete standings for either discipline.
• Driver Rating History charts: Switch between Career History and year-by-year Rating History in negotiations and Statistics popups, with adaptive scales, tooltips, current OVR, yearly change and points.
• Expanded team records: Statistics now offers Drivers/Teams views and counts wins, podiums, poles, retirements and finishes by constructor car—including more than one podium for a team in the same race.
• Pole and fastest-lap indicators: Added distinct P and FL markers to current and archived championship results, independently of whether bonus-point regulations are enabled.
• Standings marker preferences: Save your choices for showing pole/fastest-lap markers, with shortened retirement labels when a result cell is crowded.
• Full season-review lists: Season summaries and records no longer truncate additional podium scorers or eligible competitors; long lists scroll independently.
• Separate series in career records: Drivers who raced in both main and junior series in a year now show distinct, stacked season-history entries rather than losing one row.
• Improved podium identities: Centered names, flags and team logos, removed sponsor-prefix clutter and background team chips, and displayed each podium finisher's race time or gap to the winner.
• Cleaner results tables: Removed redundant result-delta and Pts After columns, increased row readability and updated the fastest-lap block to match the new visual style. Championship movement remains in standings.
• More legible historical results: Prior-season team colors, contrast and period-correct engine/team artwork now fit cleanly in their table cells.
• Sorting indicators: Sortable Statistics, Performance, Estimated Pace and market tables now show the active column/direction with consistent arrows.

DEV NOTE: At this point onwards, it has been 6 hours+ of editing patch notes and I am letting a little more ai-over explain creep in. Apologies. pls forgive

Mailbox, Notifications & News Presentation

• Two-pane mailbox: Rebuilt Mail into a scrollable list and persistent reading pane with subject wrapping, category colors, week/year grouping, search highlighting, sorting and saved filter/scroll settings.
• Bulk email management: Select multiple messages—including Shift-click ranges—and delete them together with an Undo action.
• Delete all read mail: Added one-click deletion of eligible read messages with an item count, confirmation and Undo. Unread, pinned, archived, essential/system and unresolved-action messages remain protected.
• Visual news analysis: Journalism editions now show qualifying gaps, grid-to-finish changes, laps led, strategy splits, retirements, title margins, teammate performance, points heatmaps and career/season numbers, with explanatory labels.
• News art and outlet branding: Added circuit hero images, podium portraits, wet-race/celebration art, milestone bars, larger wordmarks and Autospin night mode. Race stories have one results table instead of two.
• Clickable news coverage: Article links, reactions and navigation can open appropriate reports and historical race results, including from spectator careers.
• Better message actions: Pin and delete messages from context controls, use keyboard navigation/help, drag scrollbars and confirm deletions.
• Mailbox category icons: Added distinct artwork for decisions, drivers, summaries, development, finance, regulations, systems, events, news and signings.
• Readable structured messages: Testing reports, driver updates and archives now use clearer tables, calculated effect summaries and more readable names and columns.
• Group career announcements: New rookies arriving in the same week share one overview table; driver/staff retirements are likewise grouped without losing details.
• Automatic read status: Opening ordinary mail marks it read while unresolved decisions preserve their action-required behavior.

Regulation Votes & Additional Session Information

• Regulation ballot presentation: New review emails, animated vote windows, team-color/logo ballots and reopenable result screens explain both current and proposed rules. Decisions resume progression immediately once resolved.
• Calendar proposal previews: Each proposed circuit change includes track artwork and relevant circuit characteristics for easier comparison.
• Regulation icons: Added scalable icons for calendars, car profiles, entry-count policies and the overall regulation book, with clearer voting/results layouts.

Roster, Save & Track Editors

• Dedicated Oval Save Editor: Supports oval type-specific performance ratings, driver ability/potential, management leadership, crew chiefs and current/future contracts; it does not load Formula saves.
• Sponsor contract editing: Edit active and future sponsors with branded lists, drag-and-drop assigning, moving/removing/swapping and durations.
• Regulation scripting editor: Configure voting versus scripted policies, rule option ordering and neighboring values, with validation, synchronized starting selections and correct on/off bonus-point semantics.
• Resizable track editors: Both standalone track editors now support window resizing and F11 fullscreen while preserving track coordinates, canvas data and saved background images.
• Modern roster-editor layouts: Added clear schedule grids, portraits, paired performance/potential stats and engine/tyre supplier comparisons.
• Stronger roster validation: Added clear error-first feedback for malformed JSON structures, duplicates, invalid numbers and severity tables while accepting supported legacy formats.
• Event and regulation checks: The editor flags missing team-entry events, repeated/unknown team or engine joins, overlapping sponsor cycles and duplicate or conflicting regulations/scripts.
• Engine entry editing: Roster and save editors expose the new performance-band and entry-focus settings for never-entered independent and factory engines.
• Accessible Oval editing controls: Added number-step buttons, min/max limits, on/off switches, disabled-state feedback, expandable sections and scrollable editor tabs.
• More precise probability controls: Tiny incident risks are now shown with suitable decimals, percentages/fractions and finer adjustment increments.
• Improved artwork validation: Portrait filenames—including accented names—are checked using game-compatible normalization, with suggested corrections and immediate refresh after imports.
• Contract release tools: Save Editor panels now allow explicit contract releases and show more supplier details without mixing current/future obligations or main/reserve seats.
• Supplier Performance Trends controls: Trend/variation options have their own editor section, separate from starting technology levels and years.
• Better Save Editor navigation: Driver and Staff contract rosters use visible draggable scrollbars, track clicking and wheel scrolling; Car Performance rankings scroll beyond the old twelve-team limit.
• Live active-team comparison: Roster performance charts reflect only active teams and update as teams are enabled or disabled.
• Clearly labeled editors: Main-menu editor actions identify whether they open Formula or Oval data and saves.
• Oval mod validation: Expanded checks for content references, valid schedules and the 52-week limit, with repair support for editable packs.
• Points System editor restored: Restored Add Points System, and prevented zero-rated suppliers from causing division-by-zero errors in roster comparisons.
• Flexible age authoring: Removed the lower age limit for driver and staff values in the roster editor, including intentionally negative values, without changing in-game aging rules.

OPTIMIZATIONS

Race Simulation & Physics

• Much faster Oval quick simulation: The dedicated quick-sim system reduced simulation-engine time by 89–92% in three of my own personal local tests (3.72 → 0.31 s, 14.91 → 1.39 s and 29.18 → 3.25 s).
• Faster detailed Oval physics: Optimized speed calculations, lane and drafting-train choices and sequential pack spacing. Tested detailed-race results preserved classification, scoring, incidents, fuel, wear and random-event behavior.
• Faster Formula simulation: Less jitters, more speed. Please use performance modes if you are lagging still, it will help greatly.

Career Progression, Menus & Screen Loading

• Much faster Oval season transitions: Reused unchanged AI recruitment, grid and engine calculations during expansion. Benchmarked season rollover fell from approximately 131 to 15 seconds, with matching decisions and saved state. Sorry about that LOL.
• Faster management screens: Optimized Driver, Staff, Sponsor and Parts Markets, Team Lineup, Standings, Mailbox, Statistics and development previews through retained views, shared calculations and reduced repeated text/artwork layout. Options can now open without initializing the entire game world.
• Market and standings benchmark improvements: In separate tests, repeat opening improved from 31.2 to 10.6 ms for Driver Market and 11.9 to 4.5 ms for Standings at 1440p, and 25.6 to 4.8 ms for Staff Market at 1080p.
• Much faster first-session audio: Reduced tested initial Formula audio preparation from 12.7 to 2.4 seconds by reusing decoded sounds rather than preparing them repeatedly.
• Faster menu opening: Preloaded reusable artwork and view resources, avoided redundant screen construction and kept factory estimates separated by career save.
• Earlier loading feedback: Interactive race and qualifying setup now show loading feedback before performing heavier screen initialization.
• Better memory usage: Limited retained-screen buffer usage and stopped abandoned careers from unnecessarily occupying memory.
• More efficient statistics and settings: Reused week-aware statistics and table calculations and cached race-performance settings without losing responsiveness to changed preferences.
• Faster common UI elements: Cached reusable layouts, telemetry illustrations and news-page graphics until visible content, size or styling changes.
• More efficient sound playback: Cached decoded audio and crossfades, with long-running engine ambience kept on its own playback channel.

Formula & Oval Race Rendering

• Faster interactive Formula drawing: Added revision-aware artwork/logo caching and reusable track and interface surfaces, while keeping art updates working after rebrands, replacements, season changes and resizing.
• Formula drawing benchmark: In a 1080p test, live asset rendering dropped from 14.49 to 7.70 ms per frame. In a later, separate rendering/physics pass, first-lap time improved 7.1% at 1080p, 17.5% at 1440p and 21.0% at 4K against that pass's own baseline.
• Faster Oval overlays: Cached logos, live timing tables and GPS layers. Tested drawing-time savings reached 54% for live tables, 71% for GPS and 90% for loading tables.
• Faster Oval practice/qualifying results: Reused unchanged results layouts, reducing warm display updates from approximately 39–41 ms to 5–7 ms in tests.
• Improved low blue-light filter performance: Eliminated unnecessary full-screen copying. At 1080p the Low-filter presentation step improved from about 21.22 to 10.99 ms, without implying an equivalent increase in overall FPS.

BUG FIXES

Formula Race Logic, Incidents & Weather

• Discarded race consequences: Abandoning or restarting an unfinished race no longer permanently applies new injuries, fatalities, rating changes or related messages.
• Fitted performance values: Interactive Formula races no longer add full braking/acceleration ratings as extra upgrades. (yes, these were double counted previously. whoops!)
• Qualifying/prequalifying rollback: Confidence and morale changes from abandoned or restored-but-unfinished sessions are now discarded, without affecting legitimate completed-session results.
• DRS zone timing: Fixed DRS activation when its detection point is on a previous lap, including zones that wrap past the start/finish line.
• Safety Car/VSC jitters: Fixed cars seemingly using various illicit substances under safety car conditions and tweaking all over the place.
• Preseason component allocations: Opening interactive preseason testing no longer incorrectly counts test equipment against regular-season engine and gearbox quotas. Actual wear and competitive use still count normally.
• Starting ERS units: Newly authored teams with researched ERS now receive the appropriate manufactured and fitted starting units even if drivers are assigned later.
• Collision damage error: Corrected an invalid front-wing damage reference in Formula contact handling.
• Safety Car popup controls: Fixed Formula and Oval GPS overlays blocking Close, Resume and Open Strategy actions. The former controls preserve GPS, while Open Strategy correctly switches to usable strategy controls.

Oval Racing, Careers & Season Turnover

• Duplicate Oval race settlement: Prevented result reprocessing from awarding driver/constructor points, classified DNF points, purses or career records more than once.
• Joining-team reload crash: Fixed saved Oval expansion teams crashing on reload when driver agreements or car numbers initialized in the wrong order.
• Oval refueling and pit stops: Corrected tank-limit enforcement, multiple tyre/fuel services, caution and formation progression, stop resets and full-distance fueling under no-refueling regulations.
• Manufacturer progression at turnover: Fixed regulation and season-development gains being overwritten by cached contracts. Future deals and new physical engines now use the correct improved manufacturer specifications.
• False Oval DNS results: AI teams now fit available spare parts or perform affordable emergency chassis repairs before being judged ineligible to start.
• Payouts after fatal accidents: Corrected race entry ownership attribution so purse and sponsorship income is paid even when a deceased driver's seat is cleared.
• Junior Hub saving and reassignment: Fixed unsaved completed actions, invalid week restrictions, distressed-team downsizing and a failed driver reassignment incorrectly removing an existing seat.
• Oval practice physics and timing: Corrected batch setup calculations to use Oval physics and ensured recorded practice lap/sector times include actual traffic delays.
• Oval driver traits and profiles: Corrected invalid preset personalities and connected applicable driver traits to Oval sessions while keeping intended characteristics.
• Oval track metadata: Added the missing United States nationality metadata to eleven bundled Oval circuit definitions.

Contracts, Drivers, Sponsorship & Financial Records

• Finance cashflow and predictions: Corrected doubled weekly cash movement, stale weekly/YTD charts and outdated contract or race-bonus projections used for financial reports, valuations, dividends and AI budgets.
• Race costs in finance history: Completed-week reports now include race/DNF costs without charging them twice. Oval final summaries include purses, sponsor awards and driver/crew-chief bonuses before the week's financial snapshot.
• Share sales and owner returns: Fixed ownership-sale boundary cases and corrected transaction messages to show the share percentage actually sold, while retaining season-based limits.
• Pay-driver revenue projections: Annual funding and P&L views now include prorated pay-driver receipts instead of overstating or omitting contractual income.
• Sponsor assignment updates: Fixed stale negotiation or hospitality values after moving staff. Reduced staff capacity now triggers correct reallocation rather than leaving impossible assignments in place.
• Departed-team sponsors: Sponsors of defunct/departed teams are released appropriately, without wiping future commitments for teams that have not yet joined.
• Nonparticipating drivers in standings: Drivers belonging to dormant teams who never entered an event no longer appear as phantom championship participants. Legitimate zero-point starters, substitutes, departed drivers and DNS/DNQ/DNPQ entrants still count.
• Controlled Headquarters navigation: The Back button now returns to the proper holdings screen for the currently controlled team.

Cars, Development & Engine Contracts

• Factory engine debuts: Fixed new works programs incorrectly starting development from a fallback rating of 50, counting incomplete future programs in regulation spreads or applying another development cycle immediately upon entry. Season 1 authored engines remain intact.
• Customer/partner engine ratings: Supply penalties are consistently applied in horsepower, with fractional changes retained through contracts, engine production and delivery. Existing engines no longer receive a customer penalty twice.
• Chassis mass after save editing: Corrected weight changes across matching designs, existing cars and related projects. Legitimate upgrades are preserved, minimum weight rules apply and inconsistent saved copies are reconciled.
• Research legality after changing eras: Technologies that become unavailable stop/release research staff without losing earned progress or stock; illegal equipment cannot be fitted, and invalid future-dated starting levels are cleared for new careers.
• Fully funded aerodynamic projects: Removed an unintended additional penalty that reduced aerodynamic gains even when facilities were funded properly.
• Engine performance projections: Estimates without a selected driver now correctly reflect the contracted customer penalty and purchased upgrades.

Roster Editors, Data Validation & Workshop

• Damaged roster data: Unreadable roster files now display a clear error and are protected from being overwritten with empty content by an attempted save.
• Pack-specific personnel tuning: Fixed mod-defined salary and related settings being ignored when driver or staff managers loaded before the chosen database's constants.
• Oval junior-director IDs: Fixed duplicate staff IDs generated by the Oval roster editor and corrected affected bundled data that prevented packs from appearing.
• Invisible schedule controls: Fixed calendar-editor hitboxes remaining active after switching tabs, which could accidentally modify an unrelated field or reduce the season length.
• Default mod tuning completeness: Filled missing engine-entry configuration values and added checks for required runtime options across bundled season packs.
• Imported artwork not showing: Refreshes missing-image and resized-image caches when art is imported so replaced portraits and other assets become visible immediately.
• Roster validation false positives: Optional files, automatically supplied ownership/parts settings, abbreviated junior-track IDs, seasonal logos and inactive-team aero stats no longer trigger misleading validation errors.
• Text editing and clipboard: Fixed copy/cut commands, stray null characters from pasted text and cursor/Home positioning on wrapped lines in editor text fields.

Results, Timing & Telemetry Controls

• Timed qualifying completion: Qualifying now allows eligible hot laps to finish after the clock expires, preventing early Next Session actions from discarding completed attempts.
• Telemetry scrolling and inputs: Fixed hidden fuel/ERS controls, console scrolling, buttons receiving clicks outside the visible area, sector-comparison scrolling and first-use shortcuts that could crash.
• Live standings scrolling and flags: Fixed crashes from fractional mouse-wheel input, restored saved nationality flags for deceased drivers in career records and added clear close-button hover feedback.
• Championship movement indicators: Corrected post-race points and position changes to follow the real scoring/countback rules; the opening round no longer reports artificial gains from an arbitrary pre-race order.
• Overlay input blocking: Collapsed logs no longer consume unrelated clicks; settings and standings no longer respond behind active overlays.
• Qualifying radio and lap history: Restored separate radio messages for driver effort, mistakes and aborted laps, and corrected lap-history gaps to compare against the session best rather than cumulatively adding differences.
• Setup stint scrolling: Fixed fractional scroll offsets that could select invalid rows in stint histories.
• Garage and hot-lap labels: Corrected telemetry labels for cars in the garage, on out-laps and on flying laps.

I have also decided, with the release of this patch, to increase the game pricing from $12.99 USD, the price this game has been since launch in January, to $16.99 USD, as a reflection of how far the game has come from my initial launch package, especially with this upcoming update. I hope this does not come as a let-down for many of you. I will continue to abide by my guarantee of not having content/playable future series of Enduro, Oval, etc., as paywalled behind DLC. If any of you actually read through all of the patch notes, you have my condolences.

Thank you guys for everything. This has been the biggest update of my life, and none of this would be possible without you guys providing me ideas, hard-to-find bugs, etc. I appreciate you baring with me through a lot of the games ugly phase, and hope you guys will enjoy this game substantially more! Work will continue. My priorities are to continue digging into systems and refreshing them, as well as continuing making strides in oval, and beginning work on endurance, and multiplayer over the winter. I really appreciate it guys! See you all tomorrow!

- Patrick