Jezchat /\ Pitwall

All teams need an income. To get yours, hire the best Commercial Manager you can find for a reasonable sum (Most top commercials ask for between 200 000-300 000 a week, so try not to go over this amount). If you’re unsure, only hire one for 4-6 weeks, until you get a better feel for the game. Next, hire yourself 100 commercial staff. To fully utilise your new employees, set your commercial level on your staff page to 60-80%. This will ensure you’ll receive a good supply of income from merchandise, as well as increasing your sponsorship revenue.

Sponsors

First, click on the sponsors tab. This will display a table that shows your everything you need to know about your sponsorship opportunities. On the left, you'll be able to see your current sponsors, on the right, those that are soon to expire, along with those with whom you are currently in negotiations

The different sections represent different value locations on your car - the higher the number, the more they pay. To obtain high-paying sponsors, you'll need to raise your sponsor happiness. The easiest way of doing this is through regular finishing (points and podiums are even better!) and through writing press releases

At the start of your career, it's likely that you'll only be able to sign Section 1 sponsors, so click this tab. You'll see a list of all the sponsors who have deals running out within the next two weeks. You can negotiate with any of these, but bear in mind that you won't begin to get paid until they're contracted to your team. The greater the wealth, the more they sponsor will offer your team (usually), the higher the negotiation stat, the more their offer will increase each time you negotiate with them.

Select a sponsor you'd like to negotiate with (hint: if you're after money quickly, make sure you choose one that says "free" by it, as they're much more likely give you feedback sooner). This will enter you into negotiations with the sponsor. On the next screen, you will see the amount they're willing to pay you, along with their current sponsor happiness (this is different to overall sponsor happiness). The higher this happiness is, the more likely they are to sign with you over a rival team.

If you decide to enter into further negotiations with the sponsor, you will see the amount of money offered increase, but the sponsorship happiness decrease. It's up to you to strike a balance between increased income and no sponsorship at all.

If you decide you're happy with the amount offered, then just exit the screen. The sponsor will get back to you within a few days to confirm or reject the deal on the table. You can see how long this period of time will be by looking on the Negotiations panel on the overview page.

One final point to consider, is that you can sign up lower section sponsors into higher slots. For example, you can sign a Section 1 sponsor into your section 5 slot. This will only generate the same amount of revenue as a Section 1 sponsor, but providing you've got no Section 5 sponsors available, it may make sense to get the additional income whilst you can

Drivers

To race, the best bit about Pitwall, you’re going to need drivers. Click the Driver Market link and change the ‘Team’ filter to ‘Is a free driver and hasn’t signed a new contract yet’ before searching. This will display drivers that are available to you immediately. When looking for a new driver, you should strongly consider the Charisma stat. This makes sponsors happier and directly increases your income through increased merchandising. You can filter the search engine to look for more charismatic drivers on the main search page.

Next, select a driver to negotiate with. Choose one with decent stats (speed and corners are most important) and a cheap wage. On the Driver’s own page, select ‘Offer contract’ form the options box, this starts negotiations with the driver. Choose what to offer your potential driver. (As a guide, you shouldn’t pay more than 300 000 per week salary, nor more than (700 000, 250 000, 100 000 and 50 000 for each of the bonuses. Note that these are values for the best drivers, you should try to pay considerably less). Try to sign two drivers, one for each of your main roles. This will allow you to get racing as soon as possible (and therefore make your sponsors happy and earn you more money).

To submit your contract proposal, click ‘Offer contract’. You should hear back from your driver in a day or so. (Note: Not all of a driver's response has to be green - if he has no other offers on the table, he may just prefer to drive for you for next to nothing). A few days later, your driver may reject your offer, in which case you can renegotiate the terms, or he may sign it. Be careful not to sign up too many drivers, as there is no limit to the number of drivers you can employ, but you can only ever use two in a race.

Finally, once you have your drivers click Main Drivers and select their roles (Choosing Equal driver treatment is fine during your first few seasons). Click on ‘set driver orders’ to confirm and you’re sorted. Note: This can only be done on Mondays, Tuesdays or during weeks 1, 2 and 8.

Contracts

Every team must sign contracts to start racing. This can be done on the Contracts Page. For your first season, you should try to save as much money as possible on contracts, as it’s much better to spend it elsewhere. To acquire engines, check the checkbox by ‘Own Brand’ engine supplier and negotiate. Select the contract duration (1 season) and sign the contract. Repeat this for fuel and brakes. If you can afford it, the only contract that might be worth signing is a tyre contract. Own Brand tyres wear quickly, so it may mean that you have to make 4 or 5 stops in some races.

Development

To improve your chances of success, it’s important to have a good car. To develop your car, first you need designers. In the same way as you recruited your commercial head, recruit a head designer (you should be looking for a balance between good stats and cost here). Don’t worry about the experience stat. Next, you need to employ ordinary designers. This should only be done when you have an idea of what’s going on, as there’s no limit to how many you can employ. To start with, hire between 20 and 100, but bear in mind that it’s not uncommon for teams to employ in excess of 200. Set the designer level so that it and the commercial level balance to 100% (for example 30% and 70%).

Now, click on Development. This overview page shows how good your car is. The Overall Rating shows how good your part is compared to the best part in pitwall, whereas the Division rating just compares it to the best part in your division. Note – it is possible for someone to have a few parts at 100% division level, but to be much slower than their rivals. Until you have a better understanding of development, it's best to develop evenly. The potential is on scale from 0-5, parts with higher potential increase their ratings at faster rates than parts with lower potentials.

Click on the internal tab. This gives more detail about each part. Evolution improves a part’s overall rating, making it faster and more reliable, whereas a revolution increases the potential of a part, usually by ‘1’. Revolutions are important, as each year a part’s potential drops by 1. This is the first big decision you have to make in your Pitwall career. You must choose what your development strategy must be. To maximise short-term gains, you may decide ‘evolve’ parts. Do this by selecting a part and clicking ‘Evolution’. A percentage bar should appear saying 0.000%. This will increase hourly until the part is complete. You can evolve more than one part at once; however this results in each part developing slower. (To get a feel for it, try developing two or three parts at once initially.) Upon its completion, you will receive a message on your homepage saying that the part has been finished and that it has increased by x%. Ignore this figure, as for for all intents and purposes, arbitrary. Your part should have increased its overall and divisional rating considerably, this should be visible on the development page.

The other alternative you must consider is Revolution. This is a longer-term strategy, but means that the next time you evolve a part, you’ll see a bigger gain in its rating.

Finally, you must consider next year’s chassis. If it’s past week 5, you should contemplate starting this. You’ll see the progress bar increase slowly, but it should reach 100% in 3-8 weeks. You chould aim to have completed your chassis by week 13 at the very latest. Finishing early can allow you to 'overdevelop' and get a headstart on your rivals. You should also choose to focus on three parts – this will give a large boost to each of the ratings of each of these parts, whilst detracting slightly from the others.

Note – don’t be surprised to see your part ratings decrease from time to time. As the ratings are based on others’ cars, if they develop, that will make your ratings decrease slightly. Don’t worry, as you should be able to make good progress in your first few seasons.

Production

To race, you’ll need to produce components for your car. The easiest way to do this is to go to the Production Rules page and to set these up. Simply make the sentence read: If gearbox production is lower than 3 part(s) for this week, then start producing 3 new part(s) which focus on reliability. After clicking ‘update’ and repeating it for each part, this will ensure that you have no problems with your parts again. Note: it’s best to produce reliability parts initially, as your parts are not very developed and may struggle to finish the race otherwise.

Mechanics

To successfully complete pitstops, you’ll need mechanics. Select a head mechanic in the same way as the head designer previously (head mechanic is the least important, so try to save money. Pitstops is the most important stat). Next, hire approximately 40 mechanics; you won’t need any more in Division 4. The mechanic’s level should be changed for part of the week (it doesn’t matter when during the week, you could just leave 1 or 2% for the entire week). *Note - weeks 1, 2 and 8 are devoted to pre/mid-season testing. As there are no races during these weeks, you can give your mechanics some time off.

Cars

The final step before you’re ready. Click on the Cars page and create a new car. (Its name is irrelevant.) Choose a driver for the car and then look at the cascading boxes below. Click on ‘engine’. This shows you all of your available engines. You receive 4 engines each Monday from your supplier; the most recent ones are always first on the list. Don’t worry if they all say ‘unknown’, this will change. Select an engine to mount on your car. Now click on gearbox and note that you’ve probably got a different number of gearboxes than you had engines. This is because you have to produce all of your parts except for brakes and engines. Again, select a gearbox and repeat the process for each part. (Note – this can be speeded up by using the ‘Bulk mount’ button at the bottom of the page) Once you’ve selected all of the parts, click Update Car and you should see the green bars disappear. You’ll need to do this for each driver, but you’re now ready to race.

Testing

To find out how good each of your parts is, go to the Testing Page Testing is only possible on Wednesday or Thursday. On the right, select a driver, select how many laps you’d like to send him out for (1 initially), select tyre compound (soft) and the amount of fuel to put in the car (always choose more than enough – at least 10 litres for 1 lap to ensure that your driver finishes). Now select the driver and engine orders (you should use save the car and Lower RPM a lot until you get a better understanding of your car's durability) and send your driver out. After a while, your driver’s time will appear in an orange bar on the timesheets and you should notice that all of the values that were previously ‘unknown’ now have values instead. These values show how reliable your parts are (due to you being a new team, they’re not likely to be very reliable just yet). You can also check the performance of each part on the Cars page mentioned earlier (don’t worry if the performance is significantly lower than the reliability – ‘To finish first, first you have to finish).

You can now equip different components to your cars to find out which of your parts are best. You can use the “parts” option on the testing page to speed up your task by selecting “latest untested”. As you become familiar with the testing page, notice that your testing laps are recorded towards the bottom, this can be used for reference later. You should also notice that as you run more laps on a single fuel setting, you develop a ‘fuel estimate’. This is an approximation of how much fuel it takes to complete a lap of the circuit. The more laps you complete, the better this approximation is, until your mechanic tells you it’s accurate (usually after around ten laps). When you can afford it, try running longer stints, to see how well your tyres hold up.

You can also experiment with different order settings. Almost all of the time, the more aggressive strategies will result in faster times, but, especially for newer teams, they’ll also result in more spins and the increased wear may also cause a part to fail.

Qualification

To start the race, you have to obtain a grid slot. Firstly, go back to the Cars page and mount the parts you wish to use for the race (at the moment, reliability is most important). Then, head to the Qualification Page. Before you qualify, you have to decide your race strategy. You can use the Jezchat Race Tool to help see which strategies are fastest. When you know how long your first stint’s going to be, ensure that you send your driver out with at least that much fuel (adding a couple of litres is also a good idea). You should send your driver out with the same orders you’ve been using during testing to ensure that the fuel loads match.

Strategy

The penultimate step is to finalise your strategy. By selecting the Strategy Page after you've qualified you’ll be able to set your strategy in detail. Most importantly, you must remember to add each pitstop, add the correct amount of fuel during that stop and change your tyres. Secondly, you should also set the amount of mechanics to use. The optimal number varies from track to track, but more is not always better. Tracks with ‘tiny’ pitboxes may only require 15 mechanics, but your head mechanic will be on hand to give you a rough estimate

The Race

Finally, all of your hard work can pay off and you can compete in one of Pitwall’s races. The race page updates automatically and displays a wealth of information you can use. Until you get to grips with it all, just sit back and enjoy watching all of your efforts unfold. There’s a race shoutbox for you to chat to other managers during the race and you’ll hopefully be celebrating before too long.

The Aftermath

Sunday’s over, you scored your maiden points at the first attempt, so what do you do now? Well, you should've received some prize money, your sponsor happiness may have improved so you should begin to think about what areas you could improve, think about which areas are your weakest and think about where to go from here. There are no more guides available and you’re on your own, but posting on the Pitwall Forum and the Jezchat Forum, as well as looking on the Jezchat FAQ is definitely a good way to start if you’re looking for an answer to a more advanced question. Within a couple of seasons it’ll be you that can be answering the questions of other newcomers and showing them all how it’s done.

Pitwall Supporter

When you realise that Pitwall is the online game you've been looking for, why not contribute to the running of it? Using the Supporter Page you can purchase a supporter subscription for as little as €4 a season. This money not only contributes to the running and hosting of the website, but also opens up new options for you as a manager. With Pitwall Supporter you have an advertisement-free website, widgets, driver faces and other useful information that adds depth to your pitwall experience. Furthermore, you get to design and upload your own custom livery and Team logo so you can revel in the glory of winning in your own colours!

Tools

A number of users, including those here at pitwall.jezchat.com, have Excel created tools to make managing your Pitwall team just that little bit less daunting. Currently, the list includes:

- Jezchat's Race Tool. This is the most advanced Race tool available to everyone. Input everything from fuel loads to pitstop times and come up with a prediction of your race time. Perfect for deciding how many times to stop

- TriggerFish's Youth Record Sheet. Ideal for keeping track on how your youths are progressing. Unfortunately this is only in Excel 2007 format at the moment.

- Finance Sheet 2007. Ideal for keeping track of your finances. There is also an Excel 2003 Version

- Fuel Calculator by Philip E - Provides basic information on possible strategies, as well as calculating the fuel you'll need for your own strategies. At the moment, this is only available in 2003 format.

- Production Tool. Use this to know just how late you can leave it before you start producing parts in time for the next race. Excel 2007 only.

We will be adding to this list as time goes by, but if you feel as though you've a suggestion for a new tool, or indeed one you'd like to submit for public use, please feel free to contact us on the forums

Liveries

With the benefits of Pitwall Supporter, you'll be able to design your own team livery. Some of beginner guides that have been written on the forum can be found here:

Metal's original guide
James Don's liveries
Liveries by Anastos
Another attempt by Metal