The Undercut Racing Manager Circuits and the race calendar

The map is not a postcard. In The Undercut: Racing Manager every venue is a set of numbers that decide whether you undercut, overcut, or sit still. Launch careers default to about seventy hand-curated layouts. Regional cities share one stable circuit, so the same place is the same place the next time you visit. The old 100% procedural generator still exists as a Career setting for new saves. Pick it if you want a wilder world; leave it off if you want to learn a calendar.

This page is the map hub. Pair it with race strategy when a card says tyre wear is High, and with mods when you want to draw the track yourself. The pit strategy tool is the Sunday short form.

Hand-curated versus procedural

0.5.3 made hand-curated the default. Every venue races a unique layout. More curated seeds will join the pool during Early Access; the procedural engine remains an option under Settings → Career when you start a new save. 0.5.4 repeated that choice after testers asked for the old generator back.

Procedural tracks are not a bug. They still have overtaking zones, braking points, trajectories, and a pit lane. They are just worse teachers. If you are still learning Soft cliffs, stay on the curated pool so a tyre-shredder looks like a tyre-shredder the next season.

A dangerous 0.5.3 bug that let cars weave left and right through corners on hand-traced circuits is fixed in 0.5.4. If an older clip shows cars skating, that is not the launch build.

How to read a circuit card

Open Calendar. Each Grand Prix shows climate, length, turn count, race distance, downforce demand, tyre wear, and overtaking difficulty, plus a mini-map. Those labels are the strategy document.

• Tyre wear High — Soft cliffs arrive early. A two-stop is more likely to appear. Read compounds, not the letter A. Details in race strategy.
• Overtaking Difficult — qualifying is the race. Do not auto-pilot the Soft quali plan from getting started.
• Long pit lane — undercuts need a bigger tyre delta. Overcuts and Hard-first plans gain value.
• Short pit lane — the undercut is cheaper. Two-stops that were eight seconds slow on paper can win in traffic.
• High downforce / many corners — Handling and Aero parts matter more than a straight-line engine. See the parts tier list.
• Heat / Dry climate — Soft overheats in dirty air. Hard-first is a defence, not cowardice.

World Data and the circuit profile keep a history: every classification, the lap record, facilities, and the contract that keeps the race on the calendar. Circuits hold deals with the series. A booming TV market adds a round. A lost deal kills one. That is why the calendar can reshuffle between seasons even when you did nothing.

Calendar politics

A typical career runs a full Grand Prix season — on the order of twenty rounds in the current almanac — with a GP-15 review that can move venues. You do not own the calendar. You own the truck you send to it.

Two feeder series (PF2 / PF3) and eight background titles (CTC, CUP, CTM, SCTC, HGC, AGS, CGT, LRC) race in the same world. They draft regionally. They do not change your compounds. They do change which drivers are tired, injured, or available at the GP-10 window. That is a scouting problem as much as a map problem.

Injuries from crashes last one to five Grands Prix. A street venue with Difficult overtaking is a bad week to discover you have no reserve. Pack the third seat before you pack extra wings.

Practice is mapping

Free practice is how you measure this layout with this car. Wear and fuel numbers size the A/B/C plans. Trait kilometres reveal High Drag floors and Overheating cooling systems that will lie on a long stint. 0.5.3 grouped investigations and sped discovery; practice data belongs to the car, not the driver, so a seat swap does not throw the map away.

If you skip practice, you are racing a postcard. The car development page explains why a hidden trait on the floor matters more on a high-downforce venue than on a power circuit.

Weekend loadout still matters: the spare truck is capped. Ship the wings and gearbox you actually break on this layout. The screen remembers last week’s selection, which is convenient and also how you forget a street-circuit nose.

Circuit editor, in short

The in-game Circuit Editor lets you draw freehand or trace an image. 0.5.3 added per-corner Radius and Angle sliders, a trace-fidelity slider, an Analyse button that runs a full-sim lap report, and a Test drive that no longer shows a black screen. Reshaping a corner used to leave a kink; that is fixed.

Use Analyse before you share a pack. A pretty silhouette that cannot overtake is a procession, not a race. The longer how-to — folders, sprites, the 0.5.4 mod-apply bug — lives on mods.

How the map changes the pitwall

A tight street race: qualify on Soft, lock a one-stop, treat the undercut as a last resort because the pit lane is a tunnel. A tyre-shredder: measure Soft life in practice, take the two-stop if it is offered, and hunt undercuts when a rival’s wear gauge enters the slope. An open power circuit: engine supplier and dirty-air behaviour matter; drafting trains make out-laps dangerous.

The timing tower is clickable. Follow the car you want to undercut. Minimap dots show position. None of that helps if you did not read the circuit card before lights out.

Weather is still on the roadmap as headline update one. Until rain exists, climate on the card is the thermal story. Do not invent a wet tyre in a guide.

What to open next

• Race strategy — compounds and undercut windows.
• Pit strategy tool — Sunday checklist.
• Mods — draw and pack tracks.
• Getting started — first calendar.
• 0.5.4 notes — weaving fix and circuit-pool toggle.