The Undercut launches in Early Access on September 3
After two years of solo development, a closed alpha and a free demo, The Undercut — Racing Manager enters Steam Early Access on Wednesday 3 September 2026 at 9:00 CET. The branch heading there is 0.5.0 — Partners & Rivals, the biggest update the game has ever had — and it gets polished from here to launch morning.
📅 Mark the date
| Release | Wednesday 3 September 2026 |
| Time | 9:00 CET (Paris / Berlin) |
| Where | Steam — Windows, Linux, Mac, Steam OS |
| Current build | 0.5.0 — Partners & Rivals, polished until launch |
Wishlist The Undercut on Steam — a wishlist is what tells Steam to email you the moment the game goes live, and it’s genuinely the single most useful thing you can do for a solo developer on launch day.
Want to try it before then? The free demo is on the store page right now, and it’s kept in sync with the closed-test build.
What Early Access means here
The core game is finished and already good for dozens of hours: a full career, physics-driven races, procedural circuits, a living economy of sponsors and suppliers. Early Access exists so the rest gets built with the people playing it rather than in a vacuum — the roadmap after launch is shaped by what the community actually runs into.
It is not a paid beta of an empty shell. It’s a complete career sim that intends to keep growing.
⭐ Where the game stands today — 0.5.0
0.4.0 made the driver market a real system. 0.4.1 did it for the commercial side. 0.5.0 makes the paddock answer back. It’s the branch that gets polished from here to 3 September.
Partners with expectations
Signing a deal used to be the end of the story. Now it’s the beginning.
- Sponsor money is partly variable (30–50% per brand): every race pays out according to that sponsor’s satisfaction, and every finance screen shows it.
- Every sponsor and supplier sets a per-race target — a team-classification position scaled to the brand’s stature. Beat it and happiness climbs; miss it and it drops, gently early in the season, in full by the last rounds. A new debrief panel lists every partner’s target with a ✓/✗ and the mood swing it caused.
- How a contract ends matters. A happy brand hands you a head start on the renewal; an angry one negotiates against you — or refuses to talk to you for 1–5 seasons.
- Account management. Marketing work units can be parked on any brand from one explanatory popup: on a signed partner they absorb bad-weekend dissatisfaction and build renewal goodwill (Care); on an unsigned brand they court it for a head start at the next window (Court). AI clubs do both.
- Every signature triggers a proper confirmation email with the full terms and the brand’s objective — shown in the dialogs before you sign.
- A new Partners slider group (Settings → Career) calibrates the whole system.
R&D overdrive — head-room is earned, then paid for
Parts whose potential reaches past 100 performance points can now be developed there. The blue band (100–150) costs double work units and reliability; the purple band (150+) costs quadruple. AI teams follow their financial personality — aggressive managers pay the purple premium, conservative ones never do.
Top speed is earned, not given
Each car’s ceiling now derives from its engine horsepower and chassis development — roughly 320 km/h in season 1, climbing toward a series cap of 372 km/h as the grid develops. New “Speed” sliders live in Settings → Simulation.
Free practice, run your way
The Start Stint overlay lists the runs from your plan — pick one, tweak tyres, fuel, laps and engine map, launch, up to 15 laps. Programs pay off now: Quali and Race sims sharpen the weekend’s pace and familiarity, and Dev Program runs add development potential to a part of your choice. Every AI team practises too, each with its own doctrine.
🛠️ Modding tools in the main menu
A new Modding Tools entry opens two experimental editors. Both are full-game only — they are not part of the free demo. They ship in Early Access precisely because they need your feedback.
Circuit Editor
Freehand-draw a track or trace it from an image, place the start/finish and pit markers, set its identity and ratings, preview it with the real race renderer, and save it as a mod circuit ready to drop into a calendar.
Mod Editor
An offline editor for mod packs: one file dropped into mods/ can replace or extend teams, drivers, sponsors and suppliers — with logos baked onto the cars — define an entire calendar from your own circuits, or offer an Imposed scenario: take over a fully staffed existing team at race 1, no pre-season.
🌍 The game speaks your language
Full UI localization, with complete translations in French, German, Spanish, Italian and Brazilian Portuguese on top of English — hot language switching, translated commentary and emails. Plus community language packs: drop a translation file into mods/lang/ and it shows up in Settings. Fresh installs default to English.
🎮 Gamepad & Steam Deck
Menus, career UI and modals are fully playable on a pad — stick navigation, A/B confirm and cancel, shoulder-button tabs, on-screen keyboard. The Steam Deck launch crash is fixed. (Live-race pad control is the next step.)
Changed & rebalanced
- AI with intentions. Rivals follow individual commercial doctrines (different sponsor targets, partnership-vs-client supplier choices), recruit drivers to match their identity, and manage money through pluggable financial models — downgrades, equity sales and loans included.
- AI rivals actually develop again, funded from their real R&D capacity, with per-personality reliability thresholds and overdrive appetites.
- Regulation resets are paced: never two Full resets back to back — minimum 4 seasons apart, guaranteed by the 6th.
- Driver ageing is visible now (~×2.5–3 faster decline past 30) without being career-ending.
- Chequered flag by the book: results freeze at the line, in-lap cruise, lapped cars flagged at their next crossing, pit-lane finishers included.
- Pit stops gained service-time variance and crew errors scaled by your Engineering department — with an 18-second replay clip per stop.
- Escape opens a real pause menu in live sessions (Continue / Settings / Leave), a new Events tab automates reactions per event type (Nothing / Slow / Pause), and the live HUD scales to 100 / 125 / 150%.
- New PFS Series page: hall-of-fame records, season race history, regulations. The career sidebar gained a clock and live department gauges.
- Suppliers have agendas: brands can withdraw, return or newly enter the series between seasons — in the news, and by mail when it touches you.
🐛 Fixed
Stability — the big one
- The GPU memory leak is dead. Logo baking leaked ~2 MB per logo — 5.6 GB over a 73-minute session, enough to bring a machine down — and its fallout (black logos, black-square glyphs, text vanishing mid-frame) was fixed at the render-engine root. An always-on watchdog now guards the whole class of bug.
Career
- A retiring champion no longer vanishes from history: records are archived into the hall of fame and World Data. Bankrupt teams keep their all-time rankings too — and their drivers become genuinely signable.
- Engine chain cleaned up: replacements deliver your improved engine, no stale carried-over potential, federation-rushed parts are genuinely basic, and switching tyre supplier drops the old brand’s traits.
- The marketing department finds new sponsors every season, not just the first.
- Scouting no longer leaks the truth: offer popups show estimated stats, and the Missions tab finally scrolls to the bottom.
- Mid-season signings can’t overbook the roster, every offer goes through the mail-next-turn flow, and the GP-10 break mail explains the whole window.
- Suppliers with a taken works slot can still be negotiated for the client discount — and the dialog explains why that’s worth your work units.
- The race debrief: Close button always reachable, panels fit, and leaving by any path no longer skips repairs, WU refills or AI development.
Racing
- The Safety Car queue forms as one group again. Finish classification follows the sporting rules to the letter. The live dashboard locks onto the results at the flag (removing a crash), and replays got smooth motion, pit crews and correct cameras.
Interface
- Translated text auto-fits its box instead of breaking layouts; the whole car-trait catalogue is translated; mod-pack logos show everywhere.
- Settings and asset databases no longer reopen files on every read — a real win on slow drives.
Known issues
- Cars can show a lateral position snap at the start/finish line and in some overtaking situations; the anti-overlap model is being reworked to remove it.
See you on 3 September
Wishlist it, grab the demo, and come tell me what breaks. The first weeks of Early Access are the ones that decide where this game goes next — and I’d rather decide that with you than for you.
Wishlist the Full Game · Play the Demo · Join the Discord
— Staz