v0.9.9a expands the championship and its changing regulations, adds deeper damage and gearbox management, and improves car presentation, controls and career reliability as development moves toward the full release. This update includes the changes made since v0.9.8a.

Added

Championship entries and career outcomes

• Support for championships of up to 13 teams and 26 cars. WMRC entry-limit ballots can expand the field as the career develops.
• A persistent applicant pool with investor, manufacturer and privateer backing, financial eligibility, entry fees and independent team identities. New teams can fill genuine vacancies, including eligible early-season late entries; entry fees are shared among existing teams.
• Whole-season team exclusions. A second race ban in a season can trigger a WMRC hearing with votes for no further sanction, a one-season exclusion or a two-season exclusion. The accused team cannot vote in its own hearing.
• Excluded teams retain their factory, staff and development records, release their drivers and receive priority for a financially viable return.
• A WMRC Entries page showing the entry limit, current grid, entry fees, applicants and teams off the grid. Enforcement displays exclusion hearings and player votes, and the rulebook explains the entry system.
• AI financial distress can lead to missed supplier payments, sponsor departures, staff poaching and morale or reputation consequences, followed by recovery or administration.
• Team administration and rescue by new owners. A rescue preserves the team's identity and injects capital; a team without a buyer can fold.
• Player bankruptcy choices: accept an available rival appointment, lead a new entrant, take a season away or end the career.
• A season-away option that fast-forwards the championship, produces a season report and offers available appointments afterward. Following exclusion, waiting with the team reserves its place for a return.
• An ended-career screen that preserves the final career record and stops further calendar advancement.
• History retains teams that have left the grid and identifies entrants, folded teams and excluded teams without passing their records to unrelated replacements.

Engine manufacturers and changing regulations

• Engine manufacturers are now saved career entities with individual capabilities across the existing eight engine formulas.
• Manufacturers can commit to an announced formula, start a conversion programme, withdraw from the sport or enter as a new supplier.
• Formula changes provide three seasons' notice, giving manufacturers time to prepare for the incoming regulations.
• Conversion programmes affect engine performance and customer fees. Converting manufacturers develop toward their normal capability, while new manufacturers can enter to maintain sufficient supply.
• Supplier and car-programme screens warn about future availability, conversion schedules and impending supply loss. AI teams seek replacements; a player team left without supply receives emergency spot supply and a warning.
• One-season formula crossovers let the outgoing and incoming formulas race together. A team's actual engine contract determines which formula its cars use.
• WMRC equivalence reviews every eight rounds during crossover seasons, with power adjustments within a combined 5% limit and both formulas' status shown in the Agenda.

Damage and gearbox management

• Progressive race damage. Significant unrepaired damage can worsen with distance and load, affect neighbouring structures, shed wings or cause suspension and gearbox failures. Driver ability and part quality affect progression; light scuffs do not automatically escalate.
• Damaged sidepods increase engine temperatures, and driver radio messages warn about worsening damage and approaching failures.
• Eight-speed gearbox simulation with ratios derived from each car's top speed, shift wear and failures influenced by build quality, condition, casing damage and driver smoothness.
• Lost middle gears affect acceleration, while losing top gear limits straight-line speed. Limiter running and missing gears increase engine heat; lost gears appear in timing and Car Status and trigger radio warnings.
• A Manage the gearbox pit-wall instruction. Short shifting and lifting reduce wear and heat at a small pace cost, and AI teams respond to gearbox trouble. Lost gears apply to the current race and do not add a grid penalty.

Livery branding audio and controls

• Original transparent logos for all 47 base identities: 10 teams, eight engine manufacturers, five tyre manufacturers and 24 sponsors.
• Image-based team, engine, tyre and sponsor branding on the designed car and supported menu slots. Tyre markings turn with the wheels.
• Team-coloured night underglow. It is enabled by default and can be switched off in Settings.
• Venue-dependent reverb for live engines, distinguishing close street and stadium walls, open circuits, forest and alpine settings, and desert venues.
• Expanded controller navigation: D-pad or left stick, A to accept, B to cancel, shoulders for HQ pages, triggers for subtabs, X for Settings and Y for Save. Race X or right-stick click follows the existing camera-cycle action.
• Full-text hover hints for long race and pit-wall labels that need to be shortened.

Changed and improved

Race simulation and championship structure

• The existing engine formulas now affect each car's live power, dry mass, fuel or energy load weight, consumption and tank capacity. Electric energy consumption no longer produces petrol-style weight reduction.
• Fuel-plan validation uses the team's formula and explains when a stint exceeds tank capacity. AI refuelling plans split otherwise impossible stints, including hydrogen's smaller-tank requirements.
• Retired the optional experimental handling path and standardized racing on the established default model. This does not replace the ordinary handling model used in v0.9.8a.
• Knockout qualifying cuts scale with the actual field, including 26 to 18 to 10 cars. Session descriptions, comparison boards, pace tables, team selection, History and qualifying/results layouts accommodate larger grids.
• Folding no longer instantly replaces a team in the same slot. The field can shrink, a credible applicant can fill the vacancy, or the place can remain vacant.
• Solidarity advances no longer shield a team from bankruptcy indefinitely. Another deficit season with an unpaid advance can lead to administration.

Suppliers staff and finance

• Engine prices reflect the target formula's cost multiplier, and negotiations and contract lengths respect the manufacturer's available supply years.
• Staff performance bonuses now have a defined annual condition: a Constructors' Championship top-three finish with an active contract at settlement.
• Finance forecasts, booked totals and ledger explanations distinguish annual staff bonuses from driver bonuses.
• Staff and Team screens identify expired contracts, inactive departmental support and renewal needs. Hiring confirmations show the combined signing and severance cost.
• Generated technical staff names are unique across the sport.

Presentation and performance

• Garage, design and race cars share the same career livery, team colours and sponsor assignments. The top and side Livery previews reflect the selected colours, including a valid white accent.
• Refined decal placement prevents markings wrapping over sidepod and engine-cover edges or repeating on lower rear-wing elements.
• Rain streaks are less dense, less opaque and less bright at night, with a further reduction in TV, helicopter and top-down views. Spray and wet-surface cues remain; weather and tyre physics are unchanged by this visual adjustment.
• Covered 3D feeds suspend detailed visual updates and capture while the race simulation, sound and camera director continue. Returning to Live restores current cars, weather and camera state.
• Closing a race screen releases its 3D scene resources promptly.
• Revised spacing and adaptive text sizing improve long circuit, team and part names across the menu, HQ, Calendar, garage, testing, parts and race screens.
• Qualifying controls, counters and hints describe usable or serviceable allocated tyre sets, including used tyres, instead of implying every outing requires a fresh set.

Fixed and patched

Tyre allocation and wet race strategy

• AI cars select appropriate opening race tyres after weather and saved weekend allocations are restored. They fit real available sets and retain their existing wear, while player starting selections remain authoritative.
• AI replacement tyres use the live surface for planned stops, safety cars, undercuts, tyre cliffs, critical tyres, fuel stops and repairs. Queued calls and actual fitting recheck conditions, and drying returns to the original slick plan.
• Corrected intermediate-to-full-wet and full-wet-to-intermediate transitions, with separate entry and exit thresholds to prevent contradictory crossover calls. AI checks actual spare availability and avoids unnecessary weather stops when the fitted set already suits the surface.
• Exhausted allocations no longer create fresh tyres. A failed tyre change retains the real mounted compound, set identity, mileage, wear, temperatures, graining, blistering and puncture state; refuelling and repairs can still complete.
• Used sets can be removed and refitted with their age and individual corner wear intact. NEW and USED preferences fall back only to serviceable real sets; punctured, unavailable and worn-out sets remain excluded.
• Practice and qualifying cars stay parked with an explanation when no usable set is available, instead of inventing tyres, advancing a programme or pretending the car has departed. Qualifying can reuse serviceable used tyres after fresh sets run out.
• Session startup, saved-state readback and simulated-session wear preserve tyre identities and accumulated mileage. Capturing session state cannot rejuvenate a set or change its compound or set number.

Race scoring and championship records

• Very small forward start/finish crossings in the pit lane now count the completed lap correctly, while stationary and reverse movement remain protected against false scoring.
• Fixed traffic-blocked pit release moving a car backwards into its box after it had already passed it, while its scored distance stayed ahead.
• The fastest-lap bonus requires an eligible finisher. A retired or punctured car cannot receive the point merely because its classified position remains in the top ten.
• Current-season driver standings retain genuine participants after transfers, departure from the grid or the end of emergency cover.
• Recreated emergency-driver profiles recover their own current-season points and wins from archived results.
• Season rollover resets points, wins and podium tallies for reserves, free agents and temporarily absent contracted drivers as well as race drivers, preventing a later hire from importing the previous season's totals.

Driver transfers identity and temporary cover

• Signing a rival reserve transfers the correct driver without overwriting a rival race seat or duplicating ownership. Invalid source indices and transfers involving active race-seat cover are rejected before roster or money changes.
• Pre-contract arrivals retain their personal racing numbers, while replacement rookies keep newly generated unused numbers.
• Injury and ban cover preserve a reserve's personal racing number and restore it safely afterward.
• Number generation accounts for active, available, temporarily absent and staged entrant drivers, preventing new collisions during recruitment, team folding and cover.
• Nested injury and ban substitutions return in the correct order without losing the original contracted driver.
• Renewal screens, wages and bonus forecasts use the actual contracted people during temporary or nested cover.
• Transfers, junior promotions and mid-season AI replacements cannot overwrite a seat occupied by active temporary cover.

Staff contracts and annual settlement

• Expired technical staff stop providing specialist departmental work, wages, bonuses, training and tenure growth. Renewal refreshes departmental support immediately; factory minimums and the independent pit crew remain available.
• Intentionally empty staff rosters remain empty after loading and winter initialization.
• Annual settlement cannot be applied twice, including after saving and reloading. Forecasts and settlement use the same driver and staff bonus calculation.
• Hiring and renewal reject malformed, refused or unaffordable terms before changing money or ownership.
• Renewal signing bonuses are paid, and replacing an active incumbent includes the quoted severance in the upfront bill.
• Successful staff poaching installs the employee in the actual destination, releases the displaced employee, pays the full cost and refreshes both teams.
• Failed staff approaches remain open and reviewable. Unsuccessful AI negotiations no longer fabricate renewed deals; AI and distress-event replacements require accepted active terms.
• The delivered car uses the outgoing season's active technical staff, while the next development programme uses the roster established by the winter market.

Menus input display and saving

• Fullscreen uses supported monitor resolutions, Borderless displays desktop resolution, and Windowed adjusts the game-window size. Fullscreen changes offer Keep or Go back and automatically revert after 15 seconds without confirmation.
• Corrected font and DPI measurements that clipped headings or misaligned text at different resolutions, including affected management headers at 720p.
• Improved race and pit-wall label fitting, circuit headings and following-driver text. Car-number badges widen to retain every digit without overlapping neighbouring labels.
• Fixed misaligned mouse hit areas on hosted Car, Drivers and R&D pages, including clicks landing away from visible buttons.
• Fixed Car and People hover/click alignment after returning from a race. A closed Help layer no longer obstructs those HQ tabs.
• Fixed initial HQ controller focus and restored the correct HQ input target when closing Settings or other modal screens.
• Controller stick navigation uses a deadzone and controlled directional repeat. Repeated acceptance cannot confirm the action it has just opened.
• Leaving a page, switching subtabs, changing a contract selection or cancelling clears abandoned purchase, appointment and negotiation confirmations. Supplier negotiations close when their page is left.
• Classic Contracts displays an explicit confirmation question and working Confirm button.
• Failed primary saves no longer display SAVED. Both interface styles retain a readable failure reason, clear earlier success feedback and clear the error after a successful retry.
• Failed save-and-return leaves the live career open and preserves its current data. Ended-career and season-away exits receive the same protection.
• Suppressed, deferred, inactive or invalid-data save attempts cannot report success.

Replay recording and playback

• New recordings retain actual pit-lane, garage, pull-off and recovery/tow positions, with stable map bounds and visibility state while scrubbing.
• Recovered and missing cars disappear from the replay map at the correct point.
• Malformed or truncated recordings are rejected, and failed loading clears stale replay state.

Career and replay compatibility

• Career saving now stores the expanded grid, administration, season-away, manufacturer and crossover state. Older-career migration retains the existing grid and original engine-maker identities, supplier contracts and developed engine ratings; it does not invent a crossover already in progress.
• Already-settled seasons do not receive duplicate annual charges or retroactive staff bonuses.
• These fixes prevent new driver-number collisions and tyre-state loss. They do not automatically renumber an already-corrupt active roster or reconstruct tyre wear already lost in an older save.
• Older version-one and version-two replays remain readable through their original circuit-position fallback. Detailed pit and recovery routes are available in newly recorded replays.