📊 Your Stats = Your Ceiling

Speed and Racecraft set your raw pace. Consistency keeps you out of the wall and makes tires last. Qualifying sets where you start — and a good start now lasts, because clean air out front is a real, defensible advantage (see below). There's no single best build — rounding out your strengths beats maxing one stat, and neglecting Consistency gets you crashed out. Experiment and find a style that fits how you race.

⚖️ Strategy = Your Style

Strategy doesn't make you faster on average — it changes the shape of your race. Aggressive is fastest on fresh tires but fades and swings hard (big highs and lows). Conservative is calm and saves tires, strong late in a run. Balanced has no weakness. All three win races — pick how you like to race.

⛽ Tires & Fuel

Tires wear down over a run and worn tires cost you lap time — aggressive drivers feel this most. Fuel burns as you go (aggressive burns it faster). The track matters: short tracks chew tires while superspeedways are gentle on them but drink fuel — on a superspeedway it's fuel, not tires, that sends you to pit road. When either runs low, you pit, and when you pit depends on your style — aggressive runs its tires deep before stopping, conservative pits early and proactively, balanced is in between (a steady, high-Consistency car can stretch a stint a little further). Timing your stop is a gamble — stay out for track position, or pit early for fresh grip. Stops aren't all the same length: a stop only takes on what the car needs, so a quick fuel-only "splash" gets you out fast while a full four-tires-and-fuel service costs more time — the less you need, the less you lose on pit road.

💥 Incidents & Damage

Contact isn't all-or-nothing — it's a spectrum:

Brush — light contact picks up a little body damage. You keep going, but the car is slower until you clean it up at a stop. No caution. On the track map a brushed-but-running car wears an amber ring.

Heavy hit — a hard one does major damage. The car limps on (well off the pace) and brings out the caution so it can pit for repairs — it wears a red ring on the map.

Crash (DNF) — the worst wrecks put a car out for good. Only a car that's actually out scores a DNF; a damaged-but-running car simply loses positions.

Damage costs you real time — a hurt car runs slower until a pit stop fully repairs the body (which makes that stop longer). Consistency is your protection — the higher it is, the lower your crash and incident risk, so neglecting it gets you collected in someone else's mess.

🏎 Every Track Is Different

Each race runs at one of four track types, and the track changes what works — check its card during the Break and pick your strategy to suit it:

🏟 Superspeedway — huge draft, low tire wear, fuel-limited, easy to pass, but pack-wreck risk. Leans aggressive.
🥌 Short Track — high tire wear, easy on fuel, frequent cautions, hard to pass, easy to get lapped. Leans conservative.
⚙️ Intermediate — balanced all-around, no strategy bias. The most complete car wins.
🛣️ Road Course — draft barely exists, hardest track to pass, light on fuel, precision rewarded. Leans balanced/strategic.

Drafting matters most on superspeedways (tuck up behind a car and the tow slings you past) and barely exists on a road course — your Racecraft stat works the draft and traffic.

Clean air vs. dirty air: running out front in clear air carries a small pace edge, while a car buried in a pack pays a "dirty-air tax" — a touch slower, and tires wear a little faster. How much that tax stings depends on the track's pass difficulty: on a road course or short track it's heavy, so clean air out front is sticky and a strong qualifier can keep the spot they earned; on a superspeedway the draft outweighs it, so slingshot passes still fly. Racecraft is the counter — a strong wheel-to-wheel driver shrugs off dirty air and carves through traffic. That's the rock-paper-scissors of builds: the front-runner defends clean air, the passer breaks the deadlock, the survivor outlasts both.

🎲 Anything Can Happen

Drivers have good stretches and bad stretches mid-race — nobody runs the same all day. Two stage breaks punctuate every race — the running order at each one banks championship points, so leading early pays even if you can't hold on to the finish. Cautions fly (often after a heavy wreck) and the field bunches up single-file behind the pace car for a restart. Cars that need fuel, tires, or repairs dive to pit road and rejoin at the back; cars that stay out keep their track position. The green drops for a shootout, and a strong Qualifying stat fires you off the restart line.

Caution lap-backs: being a lap down isn't a dead end. The first car a lap down always gets its lap back (the "Free Pass"), and other lapped cars get a roll for a bonus lap back — those odds ride mainly on Consistency (with a touch of Qualifying), so a steady car can dig itself back onto the lead lap.

A great car usually runs up front… but restarts shuffle the pack and upsets happen. That's racing.