Releases

F1 2026 Support

All telemetry features now support F1 2026. Key changes driven by the new game's rules:

• Overtake system - the timing tower's DRS bar is now an OT bar; the HUD overlay shows a pulsing border glow when Overtake is available; the driver list highlights the row in blue when OT is available.
• ERS reworked - F1 2026 has no deploy limit, so the deploy arc is removed. The harvest arc now uses the full circle with a dynamic harvest limit. ERS colour logic is unified in Python across all supported seasons.

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Power Unit Info Overlay

Real-time power unit telemetry showing total output (kW), ICE/MGU-K split with an animated bar, engine temperature, and current ERS deployment mode. Use it alongside the Input Telemetry overlay to understand the new 2026 power unit regulations and dial in your inputs for maximum power delivery.

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Traffic Monitor

A new MFD overlay page shows the 5 cars directly behind you on circuit, ranked by track distance. Relative distance is normalised correctly for lapped cars, and the list adapts to the actual grid size.

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Safety Car Indicator

The lap timer overlay now shows a pulsing yellow border and an animated "SAFETY CAR" / "VIRTUAL SAFETY CAR" footer during SC and VSC periods. Both disappear as soon as racing resumes. The minimal lap timer view shows the border only.

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Delta to Leader

The timing tower now shows each driver's gap to the race leader.

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Collision Severity

Race control messages now include collision severity. For newer races, collision severity will be recorded alongside the collision event.

v4.1.1 is a patch release that fixes a regression in the timing tower and adds a new display option.

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Bug Fixes

• Fixed (regression from v4.1.0): The option to combine track limit warnings and penalties into a single penalties column (Overlays -> Show track limit warnings and penalties combined in the penalties column) was missing from v4.1.0 due to an issue in the new release process. It is now available and works as intended.

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Timing Tower

• Relative lap times -- best lap and last lap columns can now be displayed as signed deltas against the player or selected reference driver, rather than absolute times. Enable this under Overlays -> Show best/last lap times relative to the player or selected reference driver (off by default).

v4.1.0 is a major feature release. The highlight is a completely new save viewer -- a polished, all-in-one web app that replaces the old file-picker workflow. Alongside that, the HUD gains auto-hiding overlays, a heavily expanded timing tower, hot-swappable UDP forwarding, and AI assistant integration via MCP.

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New Save Viewer (Highlight Feature)

The post-race save viewer has been completely replaced with a modern, open-source web app built by Fabrizio Rinaldi -- a huge thanks to Fabrizio for this contribution.

The old workflow required opening each session file manually through a file picker, then alt-tabbing back to the browser to view the data. That is now gone. The new viewer gives you:

• A session list showing all your saved races in one place
• Per-session data with detailed breakdowns, comparisons, and stats
• Everything accessible from a single web app without any file navigation

The original detailed driver view is still available as a "Legacy View" button on each session, so no data is lost.

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HUD Overlays -- Auto-Hide in Menus

• Overlays now automatically hide when you navigate to a game menu and reappear the moment a session starts. Detection is based on telemetry packet flow -- 3 seconds of silence means you are in a menu.
• Configurable in settings under Overlays -> Auto-hide overlays when the game is in a menu (on by default) and Overlays -> Seconds of telemetry silence before overlays are hidden (menu detection threshold) (default 3 s, range 1-30 s).
• If you manually hide an overlay via its toggle button while in a session, it stays hidden when you return from a menu. Entering a new session resets all overlays to visible for a clean slate.
• Fixed: overlays no longer appear on the post-race results screen.
• Fixed: overlays no longer show when you are parked in the garage during free practice or qualifying.
• Fixed: the timing tower was not honouring auto-hide correctly due to a missing driver status check.

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Timing Tower

• Reorderable columns -- column order in the timing tower can now be configured in the settings file to match your preference.
• Six new columns -- Best Lap, Last Lap, Wing Damage, Speed Trap, Fuel, and Driver Status are now available to add to your timing tower layout.
• Tower height now scales with the number of cars on track, removing the empty grey space at the bottom.
• In free practice and qualifying, drivers who are in the pit lane now show their best-lap delta instead of "PIT", keeping the gap information visible at all times.
• The speed unit setting (Overlays -> Speed unit) now applies to speed values in the timing tower.
• The fuel estimation technique setting (Overlays -> Surplus fuel estimation technique) now applies to fuel figures in the timing tower.

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Engineer View (Browser Dashboard)

• Column freeze -- hover over any column header to reveal a lock icon. Clicking it pins all columns up to and including that one to the left side of the table, preventing accidental reordering. Freeze state persists across page reloads and resets when you switch profiles.
• Preset overhaul -- built-in Full and Minimal presets replace the old responsive breakpoint presets. The Minimal preset loads by default for first-time users. Editing a built-in preset forks it into a named custom profile so your changes are preserved.
• New aggregated columns: Wing Damage (front-left / front-right with per-side colour coding) and Tyre Wear (Avg) alongside the existing Tyre Wear (Max).
• Position prediction in free practice and qualifying now uses a live best-lap estimate rather than waiting for a completed lap, giving a more responsive gap readout.

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Track Radar

• Car rectangles now scale to real-world vehicle dimensions based on formula type (F1 cars use 2.0 x 5.63 m, F2 uses 1.9 x 5.285 m), giving a more accurate representation of relative car positions.
• Full visual overhaul: sector glows are pre-baked and the radar now renders via a more efficient rendering path. Frame miss rates dropped from ~119 to ~4 at 30 fps, resulting in a noticeably smoother radar.

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Hot-Swappable UDP Forwarding

Previously, adding, removing, or changing UDP forwarding targets required a full restart of the telemetry server to take effect. UDP forwarding targets are now hot-swappable -- changes made in the launcher settings apply immediately at runtime with no restart needed.

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Settings and Configuration

• Overlays -> Speed unit and Overlays -> Surplus fuel estimation technique have both been promoted to the top level of the Overlays settings section. They now apply consistently across the HUD overlay, timing tower, and fuel page -- no need to configure them separately in multiple places.

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Bug Fixes

• Fixed race control messages where "Custom Team" was not being resolved to the team name you configured under My Team settings.
• Fixed the lap timer overlay position estimate not accounting for driver status and lap validity, which could produce incorrect position predictions.

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AI Assistant Integration via MCP (Power Users)

Pits n' Giggles now includes an MCP (Model Context Protocol) server, making it compatible with AI assistants that support MCP -- such as Claude Desktop, ChatGPT Desktop, Cursor, and others. Your AI assistant can query live race data directly as a tool: ask it about tyre wear, gap to the leader, fuel load, or anything else the app tracks.

Pits n' Giggles does not come bundled with any AI. Your AI assistant, any associated account, and any subscription costs are entirely your own responsibility.

In this release, MCP access covers live session data only. Support for saved session data will be added in a future release.

Two transports are supported:

stdio (recommended for Claude Desktop) The AI app launches Pits n' Giggles directly as an MCP subprocess -- no separate server setup needed. Add the following to your claude_desktop_config.json:

"mcpServers": {
  "pits_n_giggles": {
    "command": "<full path to the Pits n' Giggles executable>",
    "args": [
      "--mcp",
      "--wd",
      "<folder containing the Pits n' Giggles executable>"
    ]
  }
}

HTTP (for ChatGPT Desktop and other HTTP-based MCP clients) Enable the HTTP server in settings under MCP -> Enable MCP HTTP Server. Then point your AI app at localhost (or the machine's IP if remote) and port 4770 (configurable under MCP -> MCP HTTP Server Port).

For a step-by-step ChatGPT Desktop setup guide, see pitsngiggles.com/blog/setting-up-chatgpt-mcp.

This is a hotfix addressing a regression that caused the dashboard to break. The immediate trigger was an update pushed by the ag-grid team, but the underlying issue was on our side - CDN dependencies weren't pinned to exact versions, so any upstream update could silently invalidate our integrity checks.

Bug Fixes

• Dashboard scripts failing to load - ag-grid (the data table library used in the driver and engineer views) stopped loading after the CDN updated the file it was serving, causing an integrity check mismatch. All CDN-loaded libraries are now pinned to exact versions so this cannot happen again silently.

This release replaces the incorrect executable uploaded in v4.0.1. No application changes from v4.0.1 - only the packaged binary/version has been corrected. Below are the release notes from the previous release

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This is a hotfix release focused on reliability and data accuracy, addressing a handful of bugs introduced or uncovered in v4.0.0.

F1 2025 Session Data Protection

• Just-in-case autosave -- F1 2025 has a game bug where a false session-start signal is sent just before the final classification screen, which previously caused all collected session data to be wiped before it could be saved. The app now detects this pattern and automatically saves your data as a precaution, so your race results are no longer lost. This can be turned off under Save Data -> Just-in-case autosave in settings.

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Data & Display Improvements

• Tyre wear MFD page now defaults to showing the maximum wear rate across all four tyres. Max wear rate is a more intuitive and commonly used metric -- it tells you which tyre is under the most stress rather than averaging it away. This can be changed under Overlays -> MFD -> Tyre wear rate metric (choices: Max, Average).
• Pace comparison now picks the right lap for each session type: last lap in races, best lap in qualifying and practice. Time Trial sessions get a dedicated 4-row layout (PB / SB / Rival / Last Lap) with deltas against your personal best.

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Bug Fixes

• Fixed the dashboard connection error that could occur on first load -- v4.0.0 inadvertently flipped the connection transport order, causing a crash when binary telemetry packets were sent over the wrong channel.
• Fixed the driver view not correctly highlighting the reference driver row when switching to spectator mode.
• Fixed the tyre stint history chart in the overall race stats page showing a blank tab on initial load.