Race Engineer in Capture

Talk to Ray, your Race Engineer, inside Capture. Connect your AI and Braking Lab, ask about your laps and setups, and read charts drawn from your data.

Ray: Radio check. I’m Ray. Ask me about any lap.

Ray, your Race Engineer, lives inside Capture. Ask him where you lose time, how to brake better or what changed between two setups. He reads your sessions, laps, setups and reports in Braking Lab.

Ray runs on the AI you already pay for: Claude Code, Codex or Gemini CLI. The usage counts against your AI plan.

What you need

Capture 1.4.1 or later on Windows, signed in to your Braking Lab account
An account for one of the supported AIs (see Accounts)
Two connections, both in Settings → Race Engineer: your AI and Braking Lab

Connect your AI

Open Settings → Race Engineer.
Under Your AI, press Connect next to Claude Code, Codex or Gemini CLI.
Finish signing in on your AI’s own page in your browser.

On Windows, Connect downloads the official, unmodified CLI at a fixed version. Capture checks the downloaded file before it uses it. Capture keeps the CLI in a private Capture profile.

You sign in inside that private profile. Capture does not reuse a sign-in you already have in a CLI on your computer. Capture never sees your password.

To make one AI the default for new conversations, press Use by default.

Accounts

AI	Account it accepts
Claude Code	A Claude Pro or Max subscription, signed in with claude.ai. API keys and Team plans are not accepted.
Codex	A ChatGPT account
Gemini CLI	A personal Google account

Gemini CLI: Capture cannot check a saved Gemini CLI sign-in. After Capture restarts, you may have to press Connect again.

Connect Braking Lab

In Settings → Race Engineer, go to Braking Lab connection.
Press Connect Braking Lab.
Finish signing in to Braking Lab in your browser.

This links the Race Engineer to your Braking Lab account through the Braking Lab MCP server. Your AI connects separately.

If connecting fails

Capture 1.4.1 fixed this connection: it now completes after you approve access in your browser. If you use 1.4.0, update first.

Capture tells you why a connection did not complete:

Message	What to do
Access wasn’t allowed in your browser	You declined access. Press Connect Braking Lab again and approve it.
Sign-in cancelled	You closed or cancelled the sign-in. Connect again when you are ready.
Connecting took too long	Try again. Check your internet connection if it happens again.
Capture didn’t understand Braking Lab’s answer	The sign-in was not accepted. Try again, and update Capture if it continues.
You’re signed in with a different account now	Connect again with the account you use in Capture.

Model and thinking time

Claude Code and Codex start on the recommended choice:

AI	Model	Thinking time
Claude Code	Opus 5.5	Medium
Codex	GPT-6-Sol	Medium

To change the default, use Model and Reasoning in Settings → Race Engineer.
To change it for one conversation, use Model and Thinking time in the composer.

The menu says what each thinking level trades in speed and depth. If your AI account does not include the recommended model, choose another one.

Gemini CLI has no model or thinking-time choice.

Start a conversation

Open Race Engineer in the sidebar and press New. A new conversation starts empty.

You do not have to add anything. Ray looks up your latest session, setups and reports himself. He also offers a few questions to start with:

“Where am I losing time against my reference?”
“How can I improve my braking?”
“Summarize my last stint”

If your latest session is still uploading, Ray says so. He does not answer from an older session.

Add laps and setups

Press Add to open Laps and setups. It holds the laps on this PC and the setups in your account.

Search by track, car or setup.
Show laps, setups or both, and filter by simulator.
Laps are grouped by date.
Press Add on a lap. Then press Compare on a second lap to use it as the reference.
For a setup, you can also add the previous version to compare.

The lap picker shows the simulator’s own lap time. It marks out laps, in laps, invalid laps and laps with an off-track or incident. An added lap appears as “Lap 12 · 1:52.341”.

A question holds up to eight items.

The Workbench

Open the Workbench to look at the laps you added in more detail. It slides in beside the conversation and pushes the chat aside. Fold it away from its own header.

Chat keys

Key	Action
Enter	Send
Shift+Enter	New line
Ctrl+Enter	Send

While Ray replies, Send becomes Stop reply in the same place.

Capture shows what Ray is doing:

Consulting your data…
Analyzing what it found…
Writing…
Waiting for your approval

The conversation scrolls to the newest message, unless you scrolled up to read.

Charts in replies

Ray can show these charts and panels in a reply:

The braking through one zone
Several laps overlaid in one zone
A corner card
Where time is gained or lost along the lap
Speed, throttle and brake over a stretch of the lap
A session summary

Capture draws these charts from your laps and measures their numbers from your data. Ray never writes those numbers.

A panel that Ray fills in himself carries the label AI estimate. It is not measured from your telemetry.

Replies use headings, lists and tables. Press Copy to copy a reply.

Setups and exercises

Ray can show a saved setup version, and what changed between two versions.

Le Mans Ultimate: press Save setup file to save the setup to your computer.
iRacing: press Show garage values to get the list of values to enter in the iRacing garage. There is no file to download.

Ray can save setups and create exercises from the start. These rules apply:

Saving a new setup version to your vault always asks you first. Capture shows Approve this change? with Approve and Decline.
An exercise needs your click.
Evaluations and notes on a setup you already confirmed are saved directly.

Both permissions are on by default. To turn either off, open Settings → Race Engineer → What it can do. Reading your telemetry and sessions is always active.

What Ray can and cannot reach

Ray has one tool: your Braking Lab data, through the Braking Lab MCP server. Your Braking Lab account permissions and plan apply.

Ray has no access to your files, your shell or the web on your computer. If your AI tries to use something Capture does not allow, Capture stops the reply.

Ray reads the data in your Braking Lab account. A session that is still on this PC only is not in your account yet.

Privacy

Conversations stay on this computer. They are grouped by date.
You can delete one conversation or all of them. Anything already saved to your Braking Lab account stays there.
Your questions, and the data Ray reads, go to your AI provider through its own CLI.

When a reply stops

Each stop has its own message. [AI] stands for Claude Code, Codex or Gemini CLI.

Message	What to do
”You’ve reached your AI plan’s usage limit.”	Try again when the limit resets, or switch AI in the menu below.
”Capture couldn’t reach your AI.”	Check your internet connection and try again.
”[AI] isn’t installed on this computer.”	Connect it in Settings → Race Engineer.
”[AI] isn’t signed in.”	Open Settings → Race Engineer to connect it.
”Your [AI] session expired.”	Open Settings → Race Engineer to sign in again.
”This took too long and was stopped.”	Try a narrower question.
”Your AI didn’t start in time.”	Check its connection in Settings, then try again.

Capture detects a usage limit for Claude Code and Codex. With Gemini CLI, a usage limit shows as a general error from your AI.

Example questions

“Where do I lose the most time against my best lap?”
“Compare my braking into Turn 1 on these two laps.”
“Am I releasing the brake too early in the slow corners?”
“What changed between my last two setup versions?”
“Make an exercise from my best braking zone.”

Outside Capture

You can also use your Race Engineer from Claude Code, Codex or ChatGPT through MCP, without Capture. See the Race Engineer introduction.