This is the biggest update SmartRace SCX has ever shipped. The race screen has been rebuilt from the ground up, championships finally feel feature-complete, damages got a full rework, and there’s a whole pile of new widgets, race-control-style notifications, custom sounds, and quality-of-life upgrades on top. Grab a coffee — there’s a lot to unpack.
The race screen has been rebuilt from the ground up
This is the biggest single change of the release. Columns and sub-columns now let you arrange widgets in much more creative layouts than before, you can pick from several different time-table display styles, and the display size of every widget can be configured individually. Hide whatever you don’t need (positions, gaps, lap counts — most elements can be toggled in the time-table widget settings).
The car tuning, controller assignment, and track details dialogs have also been redesigned. The VSC, ESC, Start, and Penalty buttons have moved off the race screen and into the new Quicklinks widget — keep them if you use them, drop them if you don’t. Event info (track, time, laps, etc.) is now a proper widget instead of a fixed table.
Oh, and the big one: portrait mode. SmartRace SCX finally works in portrait orientation, and on iPadOS it can be used in split view next to other apps.
Custom Sounds — make the app sound like yours
Upload your own MP3s for car engine sounds, and replace any of the built-in TTS sound events (jump start, fastest lap, race start, you name it) with your own recordings. Custom car sounds show up directly in the car-edit dropdown, and customized event sounds get a subtle overlay in the sound-event settings as a reminder that they’ve been replaced. All managed from the new Custom Sounds entry in the main menu.
Championships are finally feature-complete
A whole stack of championship upgrades that have been requested forever:
- Custom points scheme — define your own scoring (something like 50, 30, 20, 10, 5, 1 instead of just Classic or Modern).
- Manual point adjustments — add or deduct points per driver, perfect for after-the-fact penalties or bonus points.
- Assign one event to multiple championships — a single race can now count toward multiple cups at once.
- Auto-save — races and qualifyings always land in the history. No more lost results because somebody forgot to save.
- Championship standings widget — a live race-screen widget showing the current cup standings with links to dig deeper.
Damages got a full rework
Damage simulation has been completely rebuilt and now works differently than before — more realistic behavior, more knobs to tweak. The full new mechanics are documented in the SmartRace manual. Worth a read before you start your next damaged-cars season.
Smarter penalties
The penalty dialog learned a few new tricks. Drivers can now be disqualified straight from it, a lap can be added to a driver (handy when a lap got missed), and by default only active drivers show up so nobody gets accidentally penalized who isn’t even racing.
On top of that:
- Minimum pit stop duration with automatic time penalties if a driver leaves the pit too early.
- Unserved time penalties can now optionally be applied at the end of the race instead of getting lost.
- The new result screen lists all penalties a driver received during the race, so the receipt is always there.
A pile of new widgets
- Weather widget with forecast — current weather plus what’s coming.
- Event status as an LED display — clean visual of running, paused, finished.
- Rotating image widget — perfect for club sponsor logos, ad banners, or just track photos cycling on the race screen.
- Speed and brake widget — live speed and brake values for selectable controllers.
- Championship standings widget — already mentioned above, but worth pointing at again because it’s that good.
Race Control gets its own voice
Race-control messages (weather changes, VSC, incidents) now show up in a proper race-control notification style — different banner look, dedicated sound effect. They are impossible to miss, no more confusing the rain warning with every other toast.
A couple more announcement upgrades have landed too:
- New optional position change and leading lap announcements.
- Optional suppression of best lap and sector announcements during the early phase of a race, so the announcer doesn’t go nuts in the first 30 seconds.
Race settings as templates
Set up a race with 20 laps, damages, fuel sim, weather, your favorite sounds, and the announcements you want — save it as a template. Next time a race or qualifying gets started, the template appears as a tab in the dialog and brings back that exact setup with one click. Goodbye, fiddling with the same checkboxes every weekend.
A new end-of-event result screen
The end-of-race screen has been rebuilt for both races and qualifyings, with a cleaner layout and the penalty receipt mentioned above. Sharper, easier to read, more useful at a glance.
Tap the event widget to control your event
The event status widget on the race screen is now interactive: tap the status to start or stop the current event, tap the event type to start a brand-new event. Less hunting through menus mid-race weekend.
What else changed
Features
- CSV import for cars and drivers — bulk-load from a properly formatted CSV; there’s an example button in the import dialog that shows the exact format.
- Bulk delete / set active / set inactive in the car and driver databases.
- Keyboard shortcuts for all sorts of actions.
- History events can be renamed after the fact.
- Notification position is now configurable — top or bottom of the screen.
- Tire changes in rain races only happen if the driver doesn’t already have the right tires (configurable).
- Lap-time-based fuel simulation can be disabled per controller.
- VSC can alternatively be displayed as Full Course Yellow on the race screen.
- New rain and thunder sounds during rain.
- Le Mans 2025 ambient background sound added.
- Fuel bar blinks red when the tank is empty — finally hard to miss.
Improvements
- Settings dialog usability has been cleaned up across multiple areas.
- After adding a new car or driver, the list automatically jumps to the new entry.
- Event info moved from a fixed table into a proper widget.
- The old VSC / ESC / Start / Penalty buttons have been removed from the race screen — use the Quicklinks widget if needed.
That’s a lot. Have fun rebuilding your race screen — feedback is always welcome.
