I am extremely new to Pico-8, but I'm quite happy with this

I dig it! Do you have a rundown of the controls (if there are any)? I definitely could've used a mid-race pit stop to change tires but I couldn't figure out how to do that or if I even could.

@2bitchuck Thank you! ah yes sorry I forgot to do that haha. You can push x during a race to perform a pit stop. Most of the other controls are onscreen. You earn 1m per race, (2 for 3rd, 3 for 2nd etc) to spend on upgrades. You should use inters for light rain and wets for heavy rain. Tyres & tyre wear works like real life F1 tyres (temps too).

@Sonicboomish Thanks! Yeah, I had a dry course & started on softs with a pretty big time lead until around mid-race when my tires needed changing and I finished in 17th, hahaha. I'll definitely dive back in after work with my new pit crew knowledge :).

I finished 1st with Verstappen with a big lead with everyone else in the whole game. I liked it but i found it a bit samey after I unlocked all the upgrades and could not spend all the money i was banking. After the first 12 tracks, the rest I was playing on "autopilot". I think you need to find a way to spend extra money, something where you can spend money and maybe gives a random boost for the next race.

Suggestions aside, i liked the game and It has a good polish to it.

@DanteZack93 thanks for the suggestions :) I'll see how many tokens I can claw back and see if I can implement more upgrades/longevity as that is something I wanted to do

same as others - good base mechanics, needs a bit more variety somehow. well done still!
regarding tokens, see how you can use split to convert large tables into strings (search LazyDev +split2d)

@freds72 thanks mate :) yeah someone on Reddit mentioned that too so I'll be sorting that today. I agree the quali&race is a bit stale, I was mainly getting the functionality working in this first version (a lot of maths :') ) but deffo wanna add more interaction etc. I'm playing the pc version atm to get ideas haha

Must be the water

I love this game. I've played three seasons so far, winning the WDC and WCC with VER, HUL and BEA.

If you like, here are some thoughts on different aspects of the game (otherwise just ignore them, lol).

I found only a few bugs:

• I've had at least two races with heavy rain where at the end of the race (while it was still raining) multiple drivers on hard tyres made their way up the timing table (and without dry weather being forecast)
• Blue commentary messages are "spammed away" quickly if at the same time everyone is pitting. This is especially difficult when you don't get to see "rain expected".
• (maybe bug, maybe due to simplification) There is no DQ for using only one type of tyre (e.g., H-H is a good strategy on circuits with ~50 laps)
• If your driver is in 3rd but gets overtaken on the last lap, this is not shown anywhere. Instead, the podium screen just shows you in 4th. I think this is because the race timing screen shows the standing at the beginning of a lap, not at the end.

Improvement ideas (in order of importance):

• Allow cancelling the pit stop window
• Show number of laps in the race-preparation screen
• I wish the full result of qualifying and race could be viewed, not only the top three + my position. Same for the standings at the end of the season. And the constructors result is not shown at all the end.
• Add a track-based constant to the base lap time to make quali times more realistic
• When my driver is not in the top 8, show the gap (and maybe tyre) next to him nevertheless
• Speed up the lights sequence at the start of the race: I do like it, it adds to the atmosphere, but the waiting time is too long
• Gameplay-wise I wouldn't change a thing with qualifying. The starting position has very little influence on the race as it's currently implemented, so the only thing I'd do different is to speed up the timing table (it's not well legible anyway, while new times are added and drivers change around)
• Maybe consider coloring the name shortcuts in the team colors to make it easier to get an overview (at least in the timing tables, not necessarily in the commentary - but it would be nice there as well).
• For the race, you could add a column of pixels to the right of each driver's gap showing the tyres they used (or maybe only to the race end screen (see above)

Am I stupid or am I too young to understand the 90s style game control panel?

> I've had at least two races with heavy rain where at the end of the race (while it was still raining) multiple drivers on hard tyres made their way up the timing table

Found the bug while browsing your code: the weather penalty check for the race does not check hard tyres at all ;)