Talk like the pit wall
Every number in this game is measured from the race's own timing data, and every mode plays by the same rule: everything else stays exactly as it happened — only your calls change. Here is the vocabulary the pit wall argues in.
box
The radio call to pit this lap — “box, box.”
From the German 'Boxenstopp'. When you hear it doubled, the team means NOW: the driver commits to pit entry at the end of this lap.
stint
The laps run on one set of tyres, between stops.
A strategy is just stints: which compound, and for how many laps. Two stints = one stop.
compound
The tyre spec: soft is fast but fades, hard lives long but starts slower, medium splits the difference.
Three dry compounds come to each race. The colours on every chart here match the real sidewall markings — red soft, yellow medium, white hard.
degradation (deg)
Pace lost per lap of tyre age — the slope your stint slides down.
Measured here from the race's own timing data: each driver-stint is fitted separately, so the number is this track on this day, not a brochure figure. Deg is why a 20-lap-old soft loses to a 5-lap-old hard.
the cliff
Past a tyre's useful life the loss stops being gradual — pace falls off all at once.
In Strategist mode the sim adds the cliff beyond the longest stint anyone really ran that day: stretch past what the data can back and the lap times let go. The briefing's “longest that day” column is the frontier.
pit loss
Total time a stop costs versus staying out — pit lane transit plus the stationary seconds.
Measured per circuit (about 20s at most tracks, more where the lane is long). Under a safety car it roughly halves, because the field is crawling while you're in the lane — which is why the pit wall lights up the moment the SC board comes out.
undercut
Stop BEFORE your rival: fresh-tyre pace on your out-lap steals the place while they're still out.
The classic attacking call. It works when fresh tyres are much faster than worn ones — high-deg days. The defence is to cover: pit the same lap, or the one after.
overcut
Stay out LONGER than your rival: clear-air pace before your stop wins the swap.
The counter-intuitive one. It works when tyres hold on and your rival exits into traffic — your in-laps in clear air beat their out-laps in dirty air.
covering
Answering a rival's stop with your own, so their fresh tyres can't jump you.
In Strategist mode rivals do this to you: threaten an undercut inside ~4s and the car ahead pulls its stop forward. Track position defended, but on their schedule, not the ideal lap.
pit window
The span of laps where a stop actually works.
Open too early and you run out of tyre at the end; too late and the undercut has already happened to you. The briefing's real stint ranges show where the field found the window that day.
track position
Being ahead on the road — worth defending even on worse tyres.
Overtaking costs time and risk, so a slower car ahead is a wall. Half of strategy is deciding when track position beats tyre advantage; safety cars can hand it to you or take it away.
dirty air
Following closely costs pace — the car ahead's wake robs your front end.
The sim charges a following penalty inside ~1.2s. It's why the undercut exists: better to stop, run in clear air, and jump the queue than to sit in the wake.
safety car (SC / VSC)
The field slows and bunches; gaps evaporate, and a pit stop costs about half.
The great equaliser. Cheap stops, closed gaps, frozen order — a well-timed SC stop wins races and a mistimed one ruins them. The virtual SC (VSC) slows everyone in place without bunching the pack.
fuel effect
The car gets quicker as fuel burns off — a few hundredths per lap.
Roughly 0.03s/lap here, measured per race. It hides tyre deg on the stopwatch, which is why the sim fuel-corrects before fitting deg curves.
the replay rule
Everything else stays exactly as it happened — same rivals, same safety cars, same luck. Only your calls change.
The game's honesty rule. Your car runs a model calibrated on the race's own timing data; the other cars replay reality (in Strategist mode they also react to you). An unchanged strategy reproduces the real result exactly — so any difference you see, you caused.