Building Pit Crew: Creating a Fantasy Motorsport Prediction Game from Scratch
A behind-the-scenes look at building Pit Crew, a fantasy motorsport prediction game. From the initial idea and technology choices to branding, domains, and launch challenges, this post shares the journey of turning a side project into a real product.
Like many side projects, Pit Crew started with a simple question:
Why isn't there a fantasy motorsport game focused on race-day predictions rather than season-long management?
There are plenty of fantasy games that ask you to build teams, manage budgets, and optimise lineups over an entire season. They're great if you're heavily invested, but they can also become a chore.
I wanted something different.
Something you could play with friends in a few minutes before each race weekend.
That's how Pit Crew was created.
The Idea
Pit Crew is a fantasy motorsport prediction game built around a simple concept:
Predict the podium before race lock.
That's it.
Players submit their top three predictions before a race starts. After the chequered flag falls, points are awarded based on accuracy and everyone climbs (or falls) on the leaderboard.
No driver budgets.
No transfers.
No spreadsheets.
Just predictions, rivalries, and bragging rights.
The goal was to create something casual enough for newer fans while still giving hardcore motorsport followers a reason to obsess over every race weekend.
Why I Built It
I've always enjoyed prediction games.
Whether it's predicting football scores, race winners, or championship outcomes, there's something satisfying about testing your knowledge against friends.
At the same time, I've become increasingly interested in indie development and building products from scratch.
As a software developer, it's easy to spend your career building systems for other organisations. It's much harder—and far more rewarding—to build something entirely your own.
Pit Crew became an opportunity to combine three things I enjoy:
- Motorsport - Software engineering - Creating products people actually use
I wanted to build something I'd genuinely use every race weekend.
That turned out to be a useful filter throughout development.
Whenever I wasn't sure about a feature, I'd ask:
"Would I use this?"
If the answer was no, it probably didn't make the cut.
Building the First Version
One of the biggest challenges with side projects isn't the technology.
It's deciding what not to build.
The original list of ideas was enormous:
- Public leagues - Driver statistics - Head-to-head rivalries - Achievements - Team leagues - Season predictions - Historical performance tracking - Social feeds - Notifications - And about a hundred other things
The temptation was to build everything.
Instead, I focused on the smallest version that still felt fun:
- User accounts - Private leagues - Invitations - Race predictions - Leaderboards
That's it.
The goal wasn't perfection.
The goal was to get something playable.
The Technology Behind Pit Crew
From the beginning, I wanted a stack that would let me move quickly as a solo developer.
The application is built using modern web technologies and cloud services that allow me to focus on building features rather than managing infrastructure.
Some of the key decisions included:
Angular for the frontend
Firebase Authentication
Firestore
Cloud Functions
Cloudflare for domains and edge services
GitHub Actions for CI/CD
One of the advantages of modern cloud platforms is how much operational overhead they remove.
I don't have to think about patching servers, scaling infrastructure, or managing databases.
That means more time spent improving the product.
And less time acting as an accidental system administrator.
The Hardest Part Isn't Coding
If you've ever built a side project, you'll probably recognise this.
The technical work is only half the challenge.
The other half is everything else.
Design.
Branding.
Naming.
Marketing.
Documentation.
Legal pages.
Emails.
Privacy policies.
Terms and conditions.
Analytics.
Deployment pipelines.
App icons.
Social media graphics.
SEO.
Agent optimisation.
The list never ends.
In fact, creating the product often feels easier than preparing it for real users.
Choosing a Name
Naming products is surprisingly difficult.
The name needs to be memorable, available as a domain, easy to spell, and relevant to what you're building.
After exploring dozens of ideas, I settled on Pit Crew.
It captures the collaborative, competitive spirit of motorsport while remaining broad enough to grow beyond a single racing series.
Finding a domain was another challenge entirely.
After checking what felt like hundreds of combinations, I eventually secured:
The domain felt like a perfect fit.
Pit crews are teams.
Players compete in teams.
Friends create teams.
The extension reinforces the product rather than feeling like a compromise.
Building in Public
One thing I've learned while working on Pit Crew is that building the product is only the beginning.
Getting people to discover it is a completely different challenge.
As developers, we're often tempted to wait until everything is perfect before showing our work.
But real feedback only comes from real users.
That's why I'm making a conscious effort to share the journey, write about the process, and document both successes and mistakes.
Hopefully some of these posts will help other developers building their own projects.
And if they don't, at least they'll serve as a reminder of how far the project has come.
What's Next?
Pit Crew is still early in its journey.
There are plenty of ideas I'd love to explore:
- Enhanced league features - Rivalries and challenges - Achievements - Shareable race results - Better statistics and insights - Community features
But the immediate goal is simple:
Get the game into the hands of motorsport fans and learn what they actually want.
The best products aren't built in isolation.
They're shaped by the people who use them.
Final Thoughts
Pit Crew started as a small idea: make race predictions more fun.
Since then it's become a real product, a genuine side business, and an opportunity to learn skills far beyond software development.
Will it become the next big fantasy sports platform?
Probably not.
But that's not really the point.
The point is building something, putting it into the world, and seeing what happens.
And honestly, that's the most enjoyable part of the journey.
If you're thinking about starting your own side project, my advice is simple:
Start smaller than you think you should.
Ship earlier than feels comfortable.
And don't wait for perfect.
That's exactly how Pit Crew got started.