Developer Update: Wheel-to-Wheel Racing Progress

In our previous developer blog, we introduced the upcoming wheel-to-wheel racing system, aiming to deliver realistic and immersive on-track battles. Over the past month, testing has provided valuable insights and highlighted opportunities for improvement. I’ll outline the progress so far in this blog and a small but significant change in direction that we’re making now.

Building on Legacy Foundations

The challenges we've encountered during testing go back to the era when iGP Manager was just 2D. Intricate car interactions weren't required then, and even in the current 3D races, cars were mostly confined to the racing line with ghosting for overlap scenarios. The new wheel-to-wheel system is a fundamental change. The goal I stated in the last blog was to eliminate 90% of ghosting scenarios, and now I am happy to announce ghosting will be completely removed, significantly enhancing visual realism. In order to finish this though, we need more time to refine the upgrade. Now, I’m going to get technical and explain what we’re changing and why.

Refining the System

The way our simulator has always worked since 2D is to position cars on or relative to the racing line. Racing therefore involved offsetting cars relative to the racing line. This works well in most scenarios, however, edge cases arose during testing, particularly at circuits like Monaco, where confined spaces and barriers heavily restrict car movements. Complex multi-car interactions, manager-controlled boost etc. produced situations on these tracks where cars could occasionally exceed the track boundaries. This didn’t look right, visually. To tackle this, we've made a subtle yet technically significant shift: cars will be positioned relative to the road itself, and not the racing line.

It may sound like a small difference, but this one change requires the re-engineering of core simulator and viewer components. Early test results indicate a major improvement in track-boundary adherence, and improved wheel-to-wheel racing. Seeing the early results, we believe it’s going to be worth the extra effort to pursue this pivot. That is what we are now doing, and why we’re going to take some extra time to finish this.

The main challenge now is to reintroduce better racing line adherance, since we're no longer using the racing line as the root of the simulation. It's more of a technical challenge. We've got all the pieces, we just need to put it all together, which is what the extra time is for.

Check out the video below to see before/after of the two W2W systems in action:

More Realistic Racing, New Strategic Implications

We've also observed some important changes in gameplay dynamics compared to the existing ghosting system. Overtaking will become slightly more challenging, as drivers must find genuine gaps to pass opponents. This adds a new strategic layer and a deeper sense of realism to racing.

Given this development, we think it's an ideal moment to reintroduce the Boost Recharge feature. This would provide you with more tactical flexibility, making overtaking opportunities more dynamic throughout the race rather than saving all boost usage for the final laps. After carefully reviewing feedback on our previous blog, we're also pleased to announce that Boost and DRS will be activated starting from lap 2 when this update goes live. Thank you to everyone who suggested these enhancements—we greatly value your input.

The Road Ahead

Thanks to a productive month of testing, we've established a robust foundation and a clear understanding of what's needed to deliver a polished wheel-to-wheel racing experience. We anticipate another month of focused development, but we're already seeing substantial improvements all the time, as you can see in the video above. It's genuinely surprising when I compare this progress to the current live game—just how far we've come. Without a doubt, this is shaping up to be one of the most exciting updates we've delivered in a long time.

Having personally been involved in developing this new system, I've now handed it over to other talented developers on our team. This will allow me to refocus my attention on web updates, which I know have been eagerly awaited. I'll now be splitting my time between refining W2W further and implementing valuable feedback we've received on iGP Manager 2025. I'm just as keen as you are to dive into these enhancements and keep improving the experience.