Lab Tested Games
Pixel-art key art: a team principal in a white shirt and headset watches from the pit wall as a green-and-white Grand Prix car sits in the pit lane.

In development

Welcome to the Piranha Club

"The Piranha Club" was a phrase coined to describe the cut-throat world of team principals at the highest form of motor racing. Now it’s your turn to join it.

Welcome to the Piranha Club is a narrative Grand Prix racing management simulation that runs from 1980 to 2000 — from ground-effect cars and the turbo wars through manufacturer buyouts, boardroom coups and the slow corporatisation of the sport. You are the team principal: you hire the drivers, choose the engine, decide what the car is going to be, and answer to whoever is paying for it. Sometimes those paying for it won’t like your answers...

The paddock is a small world with a long memory. The people you work with remember what you said to them ten seasons ago, and the sport keeps moving whether or not your team survives it.

Coming to Steam Press kit

1980

It’s a time of incredible change.

Ground effect aerodynamics means the cars are faster than ever, turbocharged engines are on the horizon to make the cars more powerful than ever, and driver safety has only just determined that two mirrors and an on-board fire extinguisher might be a good idea. The next 20 years will bring turmoil, technology, and danger.

Start the turbo revolution

Equipe Losange

Having run a successful endurance car operation the last five years, your team based in Bicester receives a letter from Losange Automobiles S.A. to lead their manufacturer backed charge into Grand Prix racing to bring their state-of-the-art turbocharged V6 engines to a grid packed with growling V8s and Flat-12s. When they work they’re faster than anything on the grid, the problem is they tend to blow up more than they work. Can you kickstart the turbo revolution while avoiding the strings attached to your engine deal?

Make the most of a second chance

Chambers Racing

An investor gone rogue means you’re out of the team you built in the 1970s and starting a new team with six people who are equally disillusioned but only know life in the chaotic world of Grand Prix racing. You have an engine, a FIMA entry for the 1980 World Championship and £250,000. You just need a car. And sponsors. And drivers. And Facilities. Can you scrape together the resources and personnel you need to avoid the bank manager and write a story of survival and redemption into Grand Prix history?

Revive a fallen championship winning team

Foxboro International

After a decade as a mechanic in Grand Prix racing you spent five years running a GP3000 team for up-and-coming drivers to prove themselves. Now tobacco giant Foxboro wants you to revive International Racing: a team they invested heavily in, won championships, but now struggle with an outdated factory, low morale, and car that looks more at home in the mid-70s than the present. Can you reverse the fortunes of this once great team to put the car, and Foxboro’s brand, back on the top step?

Features

Under the bodywork

  • Twenty-one seasons of story Hundreds of events across three scenarios spanning two decades. Meet characters with unique voices and hidden agendas while deciding the best path for your team (and living with the consequences).
  • A race model to match Car, engine, driver, circuit and strategy all feed a simulation tuned to make your design and strategy choices have a real effect, not just a fancy roll of the dice.
  • An economy that bites Sponsors need results, inflation is always there to increase driver salaries and make crashes much more costly.
  • Design the car, not just the season Chassis, aero, technology and reliability each pull against the others. Chase the latest fad or wait for the authorities to ban it. The right call earns you victory. The wrong call puts you last.
  • The paddock remembers Engineers, drivers, directors and rivals track how you have treated them, and it shows up years later in who takes your call.
  • Sixteen endings Champion, survivor, bought out, forced out, or bankrupt before you can even reach the end. Your legacy is in your hands.

Screenshots

In motion

The team headquarters overview for Chambers Racing in 1995, showing championship standings and the next race on the calendar. A race result screen after the Brazilian Grand Prix, with a retired car burning at the trackside and its driver walking away. A story event weighing up a water-cooled brakes loophole, with engineers arguing either side and two replies to choose from. A budget warning showing a shortfall against costs, offering the choice to race anyway, review the budget, or take an emergency loan. The paddock screen listing rival teams, their engines and their driver line-ups. An end-of-season summary for 1995, showing the points scored and where the team finished in both championships.

Screenshots are from a pre-release build and may not reflect the finished game.

Fact sheet

Details

Developer
Lab Tested Games
Publisher
Lab Tested Games
Platforms
Windows, macOS
Release
Q3 2026
Price
To be announced
Genre
Management simulation, narrative
Players
Single player
Languages
English
Press contact
press@labtestedgames.com

All teams, drivers and championships in Welcome to the Piranha Club are fictional.