Last reviewed: August 3, 2026 · By the RaceYear team
Short answer: Pick a race car setup app on five things: does it work with no signal, does it have fields that fit your class, can your crew see it, can you get your data back out, and what happens to your history if you stop paying. Under about ten race nights a year, a spreadsheet is genuinely fine.
Key takeaways
Every racer who has lost a setup sheet has the same moment. You are back at a track you ran last August, the car is tight off the corner, and you know for a fact you already fixed this exact problem once. The sheet is in a binder in the shop, or it went through the wash in a firesuit pocket, or a crew guy used it to shim a scale pad. That is the moment people go looking for an app.
Disclosure before you read another line: we build one of the products in the table below. So the table reports what each vendor’s own page said on July 28, 2026, blanks and all, and where a competitor is the better buy we say so plainly. Feature lists move — verify anything that matters to you on the vendor’s site before you hand over a card.
A race car setup app is a phone or tablet app that stores your car’s setup numbers — springs, shocks, stagger, tire pressures, ride height, cross weight — as searchable records instead of paper sheets, so you can pull up what you ran at a given track in given conditions. Better ones add derived math, class templates, and a place to record what the car actually did.
The category is really three different products wearing the same name, and buying the wrong one is the most common mistake in this whole purchase.
A racer who wants to know why the car pushed buys a logger. A racer who wants to know what happens if he moves the roll center half an inch needs a simulator. They are not substitutes, and no phone app on this list claims to do the second job.
We are not going to re-argue paper versus spreadsheet versus app here — our guide to building a race car setup sheet covers what belongs on the sheet in the first place. This is about choosing the tool that holds it.
Five criteria decide this purchase, and none of them show up on a feature bullet list: offline use, class fit, team sync, data export, and what happens to your history when you stop paying.
| Criterion | The question to ask | Why it bites you |
|---|---|---|
| Offline use | Does it open, log and search with airplane mode on? | Plenty of dirt tracks sit in a hole with no bars; an app that needs a login at the pit gate is a paper sheet you can’t write on |
| Class fit | Are there real fields for your class, or a generic notes box? | You end up retyping field names every week and your history never sorts |
| Team sync | Can two people edit the same sheet from two phones? | The crew chief makes a change you never see, and Sunday’s argument has no referee |
| Data export | Can you get a PDF, CSV or printout out of it? | Without an exit, every number you enter is a rental |
| End of subscription | Read-only, export-then-lock, or gone? | Five seasons of history can vanish on a card decline in February |
Test this with airplane mode before you trust the app with a race night. The failure mode is rarely “no internet” — it is an app that needs a token refresh to open, or a search that quietly returns nothing because the records live on a server. A phone hunting for a tower at a rural fairgrounds also eats battery faster than anything else you do all night.
Of the products checked here, only RaceNight’s own page states plainly that most features run locally without signal. Race Car Setup Log from Motorsport Apps says it stores your settings on your device, which implies it. PitLogic, DirtDyno and Circle Track App do not address offline use on the pages checked on July 28, 2026. That is not the same as saying they fail — it means you have to test it yourself in the first week.
A Sprint Car sheet wants torsion bars, birdcage settings and wing position. A Late Model wants four corner springs, shocks, bars and bite. A kart wants axle, hubs and tire compound. A generic app with one big notes field will hold all of it and sort none of it.
PitLogic publishes gear charts for “sprint cars, midgets, quarter midgets, mini sprints, and more.” DirtDyno names Late Model, Modified, Sprint Car, Street Stock and Hobby Stock racers. Circle Track App advertises a trackside tuning feature where you pick your class and your handling issue. Ask for your class by name before you buy, not “we support dirt.”
PitLogic is the clearest product in this category on team use. Its features page says teammates can “view and make changes LIVE from multiple devices” and describes creating your own PitLogic team and adding members. DirtDyno does not describe multi-user editing on its page. Circle Track App markets itself as a race team manager with a “Create a Team” option, but does not describe live multi-device editing.
If you are a one-car, one-driver operation, this criterion costs you nothing. If your car owner, crew chief and driver are three different people, it is the whole ballgame.
PitLogic states a Create PDF button that produces a formatted printout. None of the other phone apps checked describe an export path. That matters more than it sounds, because there is no App Store rule backstopping you: Apple’s App Store Review Guidelines require that “if your app supports account creation, you must also offer account deletion within the app” under guideline 5.1.1, and require a privacy policy explaining data deletion — but nothing in there requires a vendor to let you take your data with you.
So deletion is guaranteed by the platform. Portability is not. Ask about it in writing.
There are three honest outcomes, and every vendor has picked one whether or not they say so: your history goes read-only, you get a window to export and then it locks, or it is gone. Email support and ask which one before you subscribe. Screenshot the answer. That reply is worth more than any feature on the marketing page, and it takes four minutes to get.
Here is what each vendor’s own site said on July 28, 2026. “Not stated” means the page did not address it — not that the feature is missing. Where a page said nothing, we left it blank rather than guess.
| Product | What it is | Offline stated | Team sync stated | Export stated | Price published |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PitLogic | Racecar and race team management app, iOS and Android | Not stated | Yes, live edits from multiple devices | Yes, Create PDF button | No; free 2-week trial |
| DirtDyno | Dirt track setup database with weather log and conditions matcher | Not stated | Not stated | Not stated | No; “Get Started Free” |
| Circle Track App | Setup book and team manager, iOS, Android and web | Not stated | Team creation offered; live editing not described | Not stated | No; annual subscription referenced |
| Race Car Setup Log | Simple on-device setup log from Motorsport Apps | Not stated; stores settings on device | Not stated | Not stated | Not stated |
| Circle Track Analyzer | Windows simulation software, not a phone app | Runs locally on your PC | Not stated | Not stated | Yes; $219.95 Standard, $319.95 Plus |
| RaceNight | Setup sheets, class templates and AI crew chief, iOS and Android | Yes, most features run locally | Coming soon | Printable PDF coming soon | Yes; $39.99/yr (RaceNight AI) or $99.99/yr (RaceNight Pro), 14-day free trial |
Two findings fall out of that table, and both of them are the reason this page exists.
Four of the five phone apps do not publish a price. PitLogic advertises a free two-week trial with no rate attached. DirtDyno says “Get Started Free” and its homepage claims “Join 1,000+ racers at dirt tracks near you,” but no price. Circle Track App refers to purchasing an annual subscription without naming the number. Race Car Setup Log lists no price either. The only other product on the list that publishes a dollar figure is Performance Trends’ Circle Track Analyzer: $219.95 for Standard and $319.95 for Plus as downloads, or $254.95 and $354.95 for a CD with a printed manual plus shipping. A Windows program that still lists Windows XP among its supported systems is more transparent about money than the rest of the phone-app category built on top of it.
Almost nobody addresses offline use in writing. For a product sold to people who work in a field behind a grandstand, that is a strange silence. Treat it as untested until you test it.
If you run a two-car team where the crew chief, the car owner and the driver all need the same sheet updating live tonight, PitLogic is the better answer right now. Its features page describes exactly that, plus a one-tap PDF for the pit table. RaceNight’s own product page lists Team Management and Printable PDF as coming soon as of July 28, 2026. We would rather you buy the thing that works this Saturday than wait on ours.
If you want to model a change before you make it — roll center, anti-dive, predicted lap time — no phone app on this list does that. Circle Track Analyzer does, and it tells you what it costs.
And if you want setups, maintenance checklists, tire inventory, a parts inventory and shock dyno data living in one app, PitLogic’s features page lists all of them. Circle Track App bundles the setup book, maintenance and a parts list, but does not mention tire inventory or shock dyno data on its page. RaceYear splits that work across two apps, which is a real trade-off: cleaner screens, one more icon.
If you run fewer than about ten nights a year at one or two tracks, a spreadsheet is genuinely fine, and anyone telling you otherwise is selling something. The value of a setup app scales with how many nights you have to compare. A full weekly show season hands you thirty-plus comparable nights; six nights of data fits on one screen and in your head.
The free options are real. Microsoft’s Excel page lists a free tier for one person that includes Excel for the web, 5 GB of cloud storage and real-time sharing, and says it “works on web, iOS, and Android” (Microsoft). Google Sheets is free too. If you just want to fill in a setup sheet PDF on a laptop rather than build anything, DocHub hosts a fillable race car setup sheet, says it is free to complete online, and lets you type, sign and send it by email or link.
One trap will get you, though, and it will get you at the worst possible time. Google’s own support page says offline access to Sheets requires Chrome or Microsoft Edge, requires you to install and turn on the Google Docs Offline extension, and requires an internet connection to set up in the first place (Google). Do that in the shop on Thursday. Do not find out at the pit gate.
Here is what a spreadsheet actually costs you, in order of how much it hurts:
The tell that you have outgrown it is simple: when you cannot answer “what did we run here last time, and did it work?” in under a minute, the spreadsheet has stopped being free.
Paper is still undefeated at exactly one thing, and it is worth saying out loud. A printed sheet works in the rain with a golf pencil and never needs a charge. Whatever you use, photograph every paper sheet before you leave the track. That is a free backup and probably the highest-value habit in this entire post. You can download printable Spring Smash setup sheets if you want a starting template tonight.
Run the trial across a real race weekend, not a Tuesday on the couch. Sun glare, greasy gloves and twenty minutes between the heat race and the feature are the actual test conditions, and every app in this category looks great in a living room.
One scheduling note that costs people their whole evaluation: trials are short. PitLogic advertises two weeks, which in most of the country is one or two race weekends. Start the trial on the Thursday before you race, not the Monday you happened to download it.
It depends far more on how many nights you run than on how far you tow. A racer who runs thirty nights at one home track has thirty comparable data points and gets real value out of searchable history. A racer running six nights a year can hold the whole season in his head and should save the money. Try a free trial across two actual race weekends before you decide either way.
Some do, some do not, and most product pages do not say. On the pages checked on July 28, 2026, only RaceNight and Motorsport Apps’ Race Car Setup Log described storing or running data locally on the device. PitLogic, DirtDyno and Circle Track App did not address offline use either way. Test it yourself with airplane mode on the first day of your trial rather than assuming.
Usually not cleanly, and that is the weakest point in this whole category. Only PitLogic describes an export, in the form of a formatted PDF printout. Apple requires apps with accounts to offer in-app account deletion, but the review guidelines carry no matching requirement to hand your data back. Ask about export in writing before you subscribe, and keep screenshots as a crude backup.
There is no single best one, because the criteria that decide it are personal: your class, your crew size, your signal at your home track, and your tolerance for an unpublished price. DirtDyno is built specifically around dirt classes and track conditions. PitLogic is strongest for teams. Circle Track App bundles maintenance and parts. Trial two of them across the same race weekend and let the pit table decide.
Not necessarily. PitLogic and Circle Track App both bundle setup logging with maintenance tasks and parts lists in one product. RaceYear splits that across two apps instead. Bundled means one login and one subscription; split means simpler screens and you only pay for what you use. Neither approach is wrong, so pick the one your crew will actually open on a Tuesday.
You can absolutely do everything above on your own. A binder, a spreadsheet and a photo of every sheet before you pull out of the pits will carry you a long way, and plenty of track championships have been won exactly that way. The measuring was never the hard part. Finding last August’s sheet at 6:40 on a Saturday is. Here is how RaceNight maps to the tasks this post just walked through:
Two things we will not pretend about, both listed on the RaceNight page itself as of July 2026: team management and printable PDF export are still coming soon. If live multi-device team editing is your deciding criterion this season, buy the app that has it today. If you want to start on paper tonight, the free printable Spring Smash setup sheets are ready to print. Then go build the sheet properly with our race car setup sheet guide, and learn the shorthand the fast guys use in smash numbers explained.
Tripped over a term in here you would have to look up? Every one of them is defined in the RaceYear racing glossary.
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