Built from curiosity.
Shaped by experience.

It started with
a 1.9 TDI.

It started with my own car, a 1.9 TDI that I've owned for the past ten years. What began as curiosity and wanting a bit more power turned into something much bigger. The car has been constantly evolving, and every time I reached one goal, I wanted to see how much further I could push it.

Over the years, that has meant experimenting with anti-lag, compound turbos running 5 bar of boost, and getting the ECU to control both turbos independently through separate outputs and control maps. The engine eventually reached over 400 horsepower, and I've also been involved in building some of the world's most powerful TDI engines.

But the horsepower itself was never the only interesting part for me. I wanted to understand exactly how everything worked, both inside the ECU and in the engine.

From four programs
to one.

The further I pushed the engine, the more time I found myself fighting the tuning tools instead of actually working on the car.

The usual process involved four different programs. One to edit the maps, another to flash the ECU, a third to record datalogs, and a fourth to view and analyze them.

Make a change, flash the ECU, switch cables, go for a test drive, record some data, come back, open the logs, try to understand what happened, and repeat the whole process.

It wasn't just slow. After long tuning sessions, I often felt mentally exhausted from concentrating on endless numbers without enough context. It was easy to lose track of what I was trying to achieve between making a change and finally seeing its effect.

I started developing additional datalogging capabilities because I needed better data, faster. At the same time, I kept thinking about how natural tuning feels on aftermarket ECUs, where you can see your position in the maps while the engine is running.

Why couldn't I have that with EDC15?

As an embedded software engineer, I had the background to start building it myself. Some things came together relatively easily. Others took years of experimenting. Getting the fast bootloader mechanism working, for example, was something I'd returned to every now and then for years before finally having a breakthrough.

But the feature that really got me excited was live map tracing. Seeing exactly where the engine is operating inside a calibration while it's running, instead of trying to reconstruct everything afterward from logs, changes the whole tuning experience.

That's what RACE15 grew into. One application that brings together the work I previously needed four separate programs to do, while adding high-speed calibration, live map tracing and other capabilities I always wished I'd had.

Tuning shouldn't
be a secret.

There's something else that has bothered me for years.

I dislike how ECU tuning is sometimes treated as some kind of secret art, where only a handful of people supposedly understand what's going on under the hood.

You pay hundreds for someone to tune your car, get a modified file back, and often have little idea what was actually changed. Want to adjust something later? In many cases, that means paying again. Want to learn how to do it yourself? Good luck finding someone willing to explain it.

I think there's too much gatekeeping in this industry.

Of course, there are extremely knowledgeable tuners out there, and their experience is valuable. But I don't agree with the idea that tuning needs to be kept mysterious to protect that expertise.

Everyone had to start somewhere. Nobody was born knowing how an ECU works or how to calibrate an engine.

And honestly, a lot of the difficulty for newcomers isn't even the actual tuning. It's figuring out hidden limiters, diagnostic restrictions, unnecessarily complicated maps and all the undocumented details that can take years to understand.

I've spent a huge amount of time figuring out those things myself. I've addressed restrictive limits, improved diagnostic access, reworked unnecessarily complicated maps to make them more tuner-friendly, and prepared calibrations to support a wider operating range.

All the available maps are also predefined with the correct scaling, units and dimensions. There's no need to start by searching for maps or figuring out how to interpret raw values.

This means you don't have to start from scratch. Just a few important calibration changes can be enough to begin exploring higher power levels, rather than spending weeks figuring out why something isn't working as expected.

And this isn't just for beginners. The same groundwork and predefined maps are available regardless of experience.

I don't want newcomers to have to spend years rediscovering things I've already figured out. And I don't want experienced tuners to feel restricted by software designed for beginners.

Making tuning more accessible doesn't mean pretending it's easy or risk-free. Understanding how an engine works, knowing what you're changing and testing the results properly will always matter.

But there's a difference between the complexity of tuning an engine and the unnecessary complexity of the tools used to do it.

That's ultimately what I want RACE15 to offer. A better starting point for newcomers, a faster workflow for experienced tuners, and fewer unnecessary obstacles between making a change and understanding its effect.

RACE15 is built specifically for EDC15, and that's where it will stay. I may explore other ECU platforms in the future, but RACE15 itself will remain dedicated to EDC15.

I'm still working on it for the same reason I've spent ten years developing that 1.9 TDI. I enjoy understanding how things work, finding ways to improve them, and helping other people achieve what they're trying to build.