PassTech User Manual

Introduction

What is PassTech?

PassTech is a racer safety-equipment checker. You tell it what helmet, harness, HANS device, rollover cage, and other safety gear you have — certification standard, dates, material — and it checks that against the published tech-inspection rules of 50 rulesets across 11 disciplines: autocross, rallycross, rally, road racing, hillclimb, ice racing, endurance racing, HPDE/track day, drag racing, karting, and drifting.

The goal is to remove surprises at tech inspection. Racers who run with more than one club or series often own gear that clears one body’s rules but not another’s — a helmet rated for one sanctioning body might be a year past what a stricter one accepts, or a rollover cage built for road racing might not satisfy a hillclimb body’s tube-size rules. PassTech surfaces that mismatch before you tow to the track, not at tech.

Every result cites the specific rulebook section it came from and the date it was last reviewed, so you can go verify it yourself — PassTech is explicitly a pre-screening tool, not a substitute for the tech inspector’s own call on race day.

Four ways in

• Check the Rules — browse what a body requires, with no gear entry needed. A reference copy of the rulebook.
• Check my gear — build and save named gear sets in My Gear (Chapter 3) so you never have to re-type your equipment twice, then check any of them straight from its own row: Will My Equipment Pass Tech? against one specific sanctioning body, or Where Can My Equipment Race? against every body/discipline PassTech knows, all at once.
• Buyer mode — check a single piece of gear before you buy it, with no gear set to build or save — the single-item version of Where Can My Equipment Race?
• Scrutineer mode — pick a discipline, sanctioning body, and class once, then scan gear one item at a time for an instant pass/fail call — built for working tech inspection, not for entering your own gear.

Privacy & offline use

Everything you enter is saved only in your browser’s local storage — there is no account, no server, and nothing is ever transmitted anywhere. From the main menu you can install PassTech to your phone’s home screen or your desktop like a regular app, so it keeps working at the track with no signal — see Chapter 1 for step-by-step install instructions and exactly what does and doesn’t need a connection.

Chapter 1

Installing PassTech on Your Mobile Device

Installing PassTech on your phone or tablet turns it into a regular app icon on your home screen — and, more importantly, lets it keep working with no signal. Almost everything PassTech does runs entirely in your browser with no server involved, so once you’ve opened it while connected, the rules, your saved gear, and the checker itself all keep working at the track even with zero bars.

The exceptions are the AI-powered photo features — Automatic mode and certification-tag scanning — since those send your photo to Google’s Gemini vision API to read it, and any link that takes you off to a sanctioning body’s own website (a rulebook download, or some tech sheets). The table below spells out exactly what needs a connection and what doesn’t:

* A few tech sheets are hosted by PassTech itself and may already be available offline if you’ve viewed them before while connected; most link directly to the sanctioning body’s own site and always need a connection.
† Reading the codriver’s exported file back in doesn’t need a connection — but you need that file already on the device, which usually means receiving it (email, AirDrop, a shared drive) while you did have one.

Installing on Android

1. Open passtech.frogracing.us in your phone’s browser (Chrome or another Chromium-based browser).
2. Tap the three-dot menu at the top right of the browser.
3. Choose the install option — wording varies by Android version, but it’s something like Install app, Add to Home Screen, or Install and create shortcut on home screen.
4. Confirm when prompted. PassTech now opens from your home screen like any other app.

Installing on iOS (iPhone/iPad)

1. Open passtech.frogracing.us in Safari — this only works in Safari, not Chrome or another browser on iOS.
2. Tap the Share button (the square with an arrow pointing up) in the toolbar.
3. Scroll down and select Add to Home Screen.
4. Tap Add to confirm.

Chapter 2

Check the Rules

No gear entry needed. Pick a sanctioning body and discipline and browse exactly what it requires, what certifications it accepts, and any conditions — a reference copy of the rulebook, not a check against equipment you own.

Walkthrough

1. From the main menu, choose “Check the rules”.
2. Toggle Driver Safety Gear / Car Safety Gear / Rollover Protection at the top to focus on just the sections you care about — all three are on by default. This same row appears on every option in this manual, always in the same place.
3. Pick a discipline (step 1), then a sanctioning body within it (step 2) — two short dropdowns instead of one long list spanning every body across every discipline. Disciplines are listed alphabetically. E.g. pick Autocross, then SCCA Solo.
4. If that body defines its own competitor classes — AMEC’s Street Legal vs. Super Modified, SCCA Solo’s Street vs. Modified, an SCCA GCR class exemption — a Refine by class dropdown appears underneath. Pick yours and the rules sharpen to exactly that class; leave it on “All classes” for the general picture.
5. Click the blue Source line to download the official rulebook PassTech cited for this body and class.
6. The Equipment Summary panel at the top shows one line for every category this body marks Required, and one for every category marked Conditional — click any icon to jump straight to that category further down the page.

Reading a category card

Below the summary, every equipment category gets its own card: what the rule requires, why (in plain language), and the full list of certification standards this body accepts — each with its expiration rule (a fixed sunset date, a number of years from the label date, or no expiration at all).

Standards PassTech tracks for that category but this body’s rulebook doesn’t mention are collapsed under a red “Not accepted” panel — a quick way to spot a real gap in a rulebook versus a standard nobody happens to use anymore. Some categories — like the Seat card below — don’t trigger that panel at all, when every standard PassTech tracks for that category happens to be one this body accepts.

Many categories also show up to four small logos in the bottom corner of their card, always in the same order:

• — links to Frog Racing’s own write-up on that piece of gear.
• — links to a Frog Racing explainer video.
• — links to a good outside video that isn’t from Frog Racing.
• — links to a recommended product to buy the item.

A category shows only the logos it actually has — most have one or two, a few have all four, and some have none. These are optional research links only; none of them are printed on an exported PDF report. The same four logos appear the same way on Will My Equipment Pass Tech? and Where Can My Equipment Race?, next to whichever categories need your attention.

Download the rulebook

Every ruleset cites the actual source document PassTech built it from — the blue Source line just above the Equipment Summary panel. Click the rulebook title to open or download the real PDF (or web page) straight from the sanctioning body, alongside the date PassTech last reviewed it against that source. This line appears the same way in Check the Rules, Will My Equipment Pass Tech?, and Where Can My Equipment Race?, so you can always trace any result back to the actual rule it came from — and double-check it yourself, since PassTech is a pre-screening tool, not a replacement for reading the rulebook.

See the sample tech sheet

For bodies where PassTech has one on file, a separate box — View sample tech sheet — appears just below the Source box, in a different color so the two aren’t confused for one thing. This is different from the rulebook: it’s a copy of the actual checklist a tech inspector works from at the event, not the regulations themselves. It’s a reference sample only — the car number, event date, and other event-specific fields on it won’t match yours — but it’s a useful preview of what scrutineering actually looks like on the day. Not every body has one cached yet; the link simply doesn’t appear for the ones that don’t.

Exporting a PDF report

Download PDF report, at the bottom of the Equipment Summary panel, saves everything currently on screen as a printable PDF — the same requirement levels, plain-language notes, and citations you see on screen, laid out for printing or emailing rather than browsing. Every chapter that has this button (1, 2, and 5) exports exactly what that chapter is currently showing; here, that’s the reference rulebook for the body/class you picked, with no verdict since no gear has been entered.

Chapter 3

My Gear

This is where you enter your safety gear, then check it against a specific sanctioning body’s rules or see everywhere it’s eligible to race — saved here as a named gear set, so you never have to re-enter it.

Building a gear set

1. From the main menu, click Check my gear to open My Gear, then Add a new gear set.
2. Choose Automatic mode (upload photos of your gear and let PassTech read the tags — walked through in detail below) or Manual mode (enter everything yourself, category by category — Chapter 4 is the full field-by-field reference for that).
3. You’re now in the editor: give the set a name — a car, a driver, whatever tells your sets apart — and optionally attach a reference photo of the car and a free-text note (e.g. “2004 Miata NB, closed roof”). Whichever mode you started in, both stay available here: the Automatic-mode upload panel and the full manual category list sit in the same editor, so you can mix and match as you go.
4. Check Add codriver gear to add a second set of driver items for rally — or pull in a codriver’s own gear directly with Import codriver gear set from file, using the file they exported from their own PassTech.

Collapsing a section

A full driver-and-car gear set can run to twenty-plus category cards on one screen, so the editor groups them under Driver Safety Gear, Car Safety Gear, and Rollover Protection headers (plus Codriver Safety Gear when a codriver is on the car). Each group header collapses independently of the individual cards inside it — fold away a section you’re not touching right now to cut down the scrolling, and reopen it to get back to the cards inside.

Automatic mode

Choosing Automatic mode (or tapping Upload gear photos in the panel that’s always present in the editor) opens a file picker — select one photo or several at once, in any mix: whole-item shots, certification-tag close-ups, or both together.

PassTech reviews the photos one at a time. For each one it names what it detected and, when a certification tag is legible in the same shot, reads that too — here, a photo of a firesuit jacket correctly identified as a Firesuit / Driving Suit with its SFI 3.2A/5 tag read straight off the sleeve patch:

Tap Use this as the item photo and/or Use this — add as a certification to confirm what you want kept — you can take one, both, or neither before moving to Next photo. Everything you’ve confirmed so far stays listed as you go, across every photo you upload in that batch:

Tap Done — review/edit manually below when you’re through, and scroll down to the category list — confirmed items already show their photo and certification filled in, exactly as if you’d typed them in yourself:

Using a saved set

1. Under Available Gear Sets, each row shows a preview of the set’s own photos as small round thumbnails — car photo first, then firesuit, helmet, HANS/head-and-neck restraint, gloves, shoes, seat, and belts, whichever are present — with a “+N” badge for anything past the first three. Click any thumbnail to zoom it to full size.
2. Click anywhere else on the row to expand its actions: Edit this gear set, Export this gear set (clicking it asks Include high-resolution photos in the export? — choose No, keep it small unless you specifically need full-size photos in the file), and Delete this gear set (asks for confirmation once before permanently removing it). Below those, two larger boxes — Will my equipment pass tech? and Where can my equipment race? — load the set straight into either checker (Chapters 5 and 6); returning to My Gear from either one reopens this same set’s row automatically.
3. Inside the editor, ← Cancel discards anything changed since you opened it — it only asks you to confirm if you actually changed something. Update this gear saves and returns to the list; it lights up bright green once there’s something to save, and stays muted otherwise. Either way, you land back on this same set’s row, expanded.
4. The Import button on the main My Gear screen reads a file straight back in — from any device (email it to a codriver, AirDrop it, save it to Drive, however you’d normally send a file).

My preferred sanctioning bodies

If you mostly race with the same one or two sanctioning bodies, set that up once here instead of re-picking it every time. Expand My preferred sanctioning bodies on the main My Gear screen (above Available Gear Sets) to set two independent preferences:

1. Preferred setup for “Will my equipment pass tech?” — pick a discipline, sanctioning body, and (if the body has one) a class, the same three pickers as Chapter 5. Once set, Will my equipment pass tech? opens straight to this combination on any saved gear set instead of whatever was picked last. Clear preference removes it and goes back to remembering your last pick, same as before this setting existed.
2. Preferred sanctioning bodies for “Where can my equipment race?” — a finer filter than Chapter 6’s own discipline checkboxes, which can only include or exclude a whole discipline at once. Expand any discipline row here to see every individual sanctioning body PassTech checks in it, and uncheck the ones you don’t race with — useful when a discipline has several bodies but you only ever run with one of them. Select all / Deselect all appears both per discipline and once at the bottom for every discipline at once. Leaving a discipline fully checked keeps it “unrestricted,” meaning any body PassTech adds there later is automatically included too — only a discipline you’ve actually narrowed down stays fixed to the bodies you picked.
3. Once anything is narrowed down here, Where can my equipment race? shows a new Only show my preferred sanctioning bodies checkbox in place of the discipline checkboxes — on by default, so results already match your preferences the moment you open it. Uncheck it to fall back to the discipline checkboxes and see every sanctioning body again for that session, without having to come back here and change anything.
4. Once at least one discipline is narrowed down, every gear set in Available Gear Sets also starts checking its own items for expired or soon-to-expire certifications against just those preferred bodies. A collapsed gear set shows a single overall icon — ✋ (red) if a preferred body actually rejects something as expired, or ⚠️ (yellow) if the only concerns are softer than that. Expand the gear set to see one line per concern, listed above the Edit/Export/Delete buttons:
5. ✋ Expired, and rejected (red) — e.g. “Seat expired on 2024-12-31 with PCA Club Racing” — that body’s own rule actually fails the item for it.
6. ⚠️ Expired, but still accepted (yellow) — some bodies explicitly don’t enforce a given item’s expiration date (or grant a grace period past it); PassTech still flags the date for your own awareness, worded to make clear the item isn’t actually failing there.
7. ⚠️ One of several certifications expired (yellow) — an item like a helmet or HANS device with two certifications (e.g. Snell and FIA) only fails a body once every certification on it does. If one has expired but another is still valid, PassTech names the expired one and confirms the item is still accepted via the other — it never shows the red hand for an item that's still genuinely passing.
8. ⚠️ Expiring soon (yellow) — nothing has expired yet, but something will before the end of the current calendar year.

Chapter 4

The detailed reference for every field you see when you expand a category card in Will My Equipment Pass Tech?, Where Can My Equipment Race?, or My Gear — how certification entry works, what to do when one item carries more than one tag or a body’s requirement depends on your class or setup, how to photograph gear so a scan actually works, and exactly what happens (and where your photo goes) when you tap Scan tag photo.

How a category card works

Every category starts collapsed with a No data tag. Expand it and you’ll find, depending on the category: a style/type dropdown where one applies (helmet full-face vs. open-face, for instance), an optional photo-upload button, and either a certification picker or a simple material-vs-certified choice.

• Pure certification categories (helmet, head & neck restraint, neck collar, fire suppression, window net where certified, seat/harness/fuel cell where certified) always need a standard picked from the dropdown — there’s no “plain material” option because the rulebook itself doesn’t offer one.
• Hybrid categories (balaclava, firesuit, gloves, shoes, socks, undergarment, arm restraint, seat, belts/harness, window net, fuel cell) first ask whether your item is plain material/stock or certified. Pick No certification and you’re done — pick Certified and the same standard dropdown appears.
• Presence-only categories (fire extinguisher, window breaker, kill switch, tow hook, tow rope, emergency triangle, first aid kit, parachute) have no certification concept at all — most are a simple yes/no toggle. Fire extinguisher, window breaker, and emergency triangle instead let you add one entry per physical unit you actually carry, each with its own photos, and tow hook is a separate front/rear toggle pair — see each one’s own entry below.

Once you pick a standard, two optional date fields appear: manufacturing date on tag/label and expiration date on tag (only if the tag itself prints one). Leave either blank if your tag doesn’t show it — PassTech falls back to whatever expiration rule the sanctioning body publishes for that standard (a fixed sunset date, a number of years from the label date, or no expiration at all) when you leave the tag’s own expiration blank.

Below the entry fields, a small result strip shows the outcome for exactly what you’ve entered against the currently-selected body: green OK once an entered certification is accepted, or red with the specific reason (rejected standard, expired, or still no data) when it isn’t.

FIA homologation numbers

Several FIA-backed standards — 8855-2021 seats, 8856-2018 firesuits, 8860-2018 helmets, and others — are backed by an official FIA Technical List: the actual homologation register FIA publishes, naming every specific product approved to that standard. Pick one of these standards on a certification row and an extra field appears, FIA homologation number on tag, for the per-product registration number printed on the label (e.g. “DC.001.18-O”, “CS.001.21”) — distinct from the standard number itself.

Type the number in and PassTech checks it live against the real list, right there on the card:

• Found, valid — a green banner confirms the manufacturer/model and, when the list states one, the date it’s valid until.
• Revoked — a red banner: FIA has withdrawn this specific homologation. Not authorized regardless of the date on the tag.
• Expired — an amber banner: past the list’s own stated validity date.
• Not found — an amber banner: this number doesn’t appear on the list at all. Double-check for typos first; if it’s correct as entered, the product may not be genuinely FIA-homologated.

This field is entirely optional — leaving it blank never affects whether the item passes. It’s an extra layer of verification for standards where FIA maintains a real product registry, on top of the certification/date check every other standard already gets. Enter the number by hand, or let Scan tag photo read it off the label for you — either way the same live check runs. For the full current list of which FIA Technical Lists PassTech checks against, see Annex B.

Multiple certification tags on one item

Some single physical items legitimately carry more than one certification tag — a helmet with both a Snell and an FIA sticker, a two-piece firesuit whose jacket and pants each carry their own homologation label. Click + Add another certification to add a second (or third) entry to the same item instead of picking just one.

Enter every real tag you have, not just one — PassTech checks all of them against a body’s accepted list and counts the item as satisfied if any entered certification qualifies. A helmet that’s both Snell SA2020 and FIA 8859-2015 rated will clear a body that only recognizes one of the two, as long as you’ve entered both.

When a requirement depends on class, or can be satisfied a different way

A handful of categories are interchangeable by design — a body treats two different pieces of equipment as satisfying the same underlying requirement, so you only need to fill in whichever one you actually run:

• Window net vs. arm restraint — several bodies (SCCA, PHA, NEHA, Pikes Peak, SCCA Time Trial, SCCNH) let a window net and an arm restraint satisfy the same open-car/no-roll-up-window requirement. Enter whichever one is actually installed; PassTech automatically credits the alternative and doesn’t ask you to fill in both. (Some bodies deliberately don’t offer this swap — GRIDLIFE, for instance, requires window net and arm restraint independently, so check the category card’s own note if you’re unsure.)
• HANS/head & neck restraint vs. neck collar — the drag-racing bodies in this app (IHRA, NHRA, PDRA, WDRA) accept a rigid HANS-style device or a padded neck collar as alternatives to each other. Fill in whichever device you actually use.
• Fire extinguisher vs. fire suppression system — a couple of bodies (Northeast GT, SCCA Time Trial) treat a handheld extinguisher and an on-board suppression system as alternative ways to satisfy the same fire-safety requirement.
• One entry escalating another’s requirement — a few drag-racing rulebooks make the balaclava requirement depend on what you enter for head & neck restraint: run a neck collar and it stays merely conditional; switch to a HANS-style device and the same rulebook now requires a fire-resistant head sock or skirted helmet underneath it. PassTech reflects this automatically once you’ve entered your actual device — you don’t need to do anything special, just enter what you really have.

Separately, the Refine by class dropdown (Check the Rules and Will My Equipment Pass Tech) changes what a body requires for your specific competitor class — e.g. a kill switch that’s required for SCCA Solo’s Modified category but not for Street. That’s independent of how you fill in the gear itself: the same certification entry on, say, your seat is read the same way no matter which class is selected; the class picker only changes which categories are marked Required/Conditional/Recommended for you.

What to photograph

Each item accepts up to six photos — ten for Rollover Protection, since documenting a cage properly can take more angles (overview, tags/labels, logbook page, padding close-ups). The most useful pattern is two shots, not one:

1. An overall shot of the whole piece of equipment — helps you (and anyone reviewing your gear later) confirm at a glance which item a set of certifications belongs to.
2. A separate close-up of the certification tag or label itself, filling as much of the frame as possible, in focus and readable. This is the photo to run Scan tag photo against — a wide shot of the whole helmet with a tiny illegible tag in the background won’t scan reliably.

If a piece of gear has multiple tags in different spots (e.g. a two-piece firesuit’s jacket and pants), photograph each tag separately and run a scan against each photo — don’t rely on one photo to capture both.

Scanning a tag photo — and its privacy implications

Scan tag photo sends the photo you select to PassTech’s own server, which forwards it to Google’s Gemini vision model for analysis and returns back the certification(s) it can read, any dates printed on the tag, and — when the tag shows one — the FIA homologation number too (see FIA homologation numbers above), so a scanned tag gets checked against the real FIA list the same way a manually-typed number would. This is not processed on your phone or computer — unlike every other part of PassTech, which never leaves your browser, a photo you scan this way is transmitted off-device to a cloud API. Don’t scan a tag photo if you’d rather that image never leave your device — entering the standard and dates by hand from the dropdown works exactly the same and never transmits anything.

If a scan comes back empty, low-confidence, or clearly misreads the tag — blurry photo, unusual wording, a standard PassTech doesn’t recognize — fall back to entering the certification manually from the dropdown. The scan is a convenience, not a requirement; every field it can fill in can also be typed in directly.

Scanning a helmet photo

Helmet cards have a second, separate scan button — Scan a full photo of the helmet — next to the Helmet style dropdown. It sends a photo of the whole helmet (not the tag) to the same Gemini vision model, which reports back whether it looks full-face (integrated chin bar) or open-face, and whether a visor/face shield is fitted, with a confidence level and any caveats about the photo.

Driver Safety Gear

Helmet

Worn by the driver; required by essentially every body in this app. Standard is printed on the certification sticker inside the shell.

Common certifications: Snell (SA, M, K, EA series), SFI 31.1/41.1/24.1, FIA 8859/8860 — some bodies also cite DOT, ECE, ASTM, or British Standard.

Balaclava

Often required for open-cockpit/open-wheel cars, or conditional if the driver has facial hair. Hybrid — plain fire-resistant material is accepted by some bodies.

Common certifications: SFI 3.3 (any tier) or FIA 8856.

Head & Neck Restraint (HANS/HNR)

A rigid HANS-style device, distinct from a padded neck collar. Standard is printed on the device’s own conformance label. Some drag-racing bodies treat this as interchangeable with a neck collar — see the alternatives section above.

Always check that your HNR tethers are compatible with the anchors on your helmet. PassTech only checks the device’s own certification standard — it doesn’t (and can’t) verify that your specific tethers physically match your specific helmet’s anchor points.

Common certifications: FIA 8858, SFI 38.1.

Neck Collar

A padded fabric/foam collar, distinct from a HANS-style device. Mainly seen in drag racing, often as an alternative to a HANS device.

Common certifications: SFI 3.3 (collar-specific rating).

Firesuit / Driving Suit

Most bodies require a certified suit; a few accept plain fire-resistant clothing at entry-level tiers. Two-piece suits often carry separate jacket/pants tags — enter both.

Common certifications: FIA 8856 (2000/2018), SFI 3.2A (1/3/5/10/15/20-layer tiers), SFI 3.4/5; CIK-FIA Level 2 for karting suits.

Fire-resistant Undergarment

Optional/conditional for most bodies — whether you need one often depends on your firesuit’s own rating (a lower-tier suit may require an underlayer to reach an effective higher rating).

Common certifications: SFI 3.3 (any tier), FIA 8856.

Gloves

Hybrid — some bodies accept plain fire-resistant gloves, others require certification.

Common certifications: SFI 3.3 (any tier), FIA 8856.

Arm Restraint

Typically required for open cars or cars without roll-up windows. Often interchangeable with a window net — see the alternatives section above.

Common certifications: SFI 3.3 (any tier), FIA 8856.

Shoes

Hybrid — plain fire-resistant/non-flammable shoes are accepted by many bodies; others want certification.

Common certifications: SFI 3.3 (any tier), FIA 8856.

Socks

Optional or unaddressed for many bodies; hybrid where it is addressed.

Common certifications: SFI 3.3 (any tier), FIA 8856.

Car Safety Gear

Seat

Many bodies allow a stock/OEM seat, especially for non-caged cars; a certified racing seat is typically only mandated once a cage or higher competition tier is involved. FIA/SFI-rated seats expire — check the date on the label.

Common certifications: SFI 39.1/39.2, FIA 8855 (1999/2010/2021), FIA 8862-2009.

Belts / Harnesses

Most bodies require a certified harness at higher levels; some allow stock OEM belts for entry-level classes. Harnesses expire — check the label date.

Common certifications: SFI 16.1/16.5/16.6, FIA 8853 (2016/98/1985), FIA 8854/98.

Window Net

Often interchangeable with an arm restraint — see the alternatives section above. Some bodies accept a plain net; others require certification.

Common certifications: SFI 27.1, FIA 8863 (2013/2015).

Fuel Cell

Often only mandated for full race cars, not street-based classes — a stock/OEM fuel tank is accepted otherwise.

Common certifications: SFI 28.1/28.3, FIA FT3/FT3.5/FT5-1999.

Fire Extinguisher

Presence-only — no certification standard in PassTech’s registry, but a body with a specific size/rating rule (minimum UL Class A/B:C rating, weight, or a current-service-date requirement) is checked directly against structured fields you enter per extinguisher — rating, weight, manufacture/service/due dates — not a free-text note.

Your gear set can carry more than one: use “+ Add another extinguisher” to enter each physical unit separately, each with its own photos and rating/date fields, rather than one shared photo pool for the category. PassTech accepts the requirement once any combination of your entered units meets the body’s stated quantity/rating rule.

Common certifications: none tracked — check the category card’s note for the body’s specific size/rating rule.

Fire Suppression System

Usually an alternative or addition to a handheld extinguisher — see the alternatives section above.

Common certifications: SFI 17.1/17.2, FIA 8865-2015, FIA Technical List #16/#52.

Kill Switch / Battery Cutoff

Presence-only — usually a presence plus labeling/accessibility requirement (e.g. marked with the international spark-in-a-triangle symbol, reachable from outside the car).

Common certifications: none — no certification standard involved.

Hood Pins

Presence-only — securing the hood beyond its stock latch, usually required above a speed/discipline threshold so it can’t fly open or off.

Common certifications: none — no certification standard involved.

Tow Hook

Presence-only — entered as separate front and rear toggles rather than one combined checkbox, since bodies differ on what they actually require: most want both ends, a few (e.g. IHRA) only require one. Check the category card’s note for which this body needs. Sometimes paired with a color-marking rule so corner workers can spot it quickly.

Common certifications: none — no certification standard involved.

Tow Rope / Strap

Presence-only — usually just a requirement to carry one.

Common certifications: none — no certification standard involved.

Emergency Triangle

Presence-only — a roadside warning triangle carried in the car; usually required for rally-adjacent disciplines. Some bodies specify both a count and a minimum size (e.g. ARA requires three, each at least 12″ per side) — like fire extinguisher and window breaker, your gear set can carry more than one: use “+ Add another triangle” to enter each physical triangle separately with its own side length and photos, rather than one shared photo pool for the category.

Common certifications: none — no certification standard involved.

First Aid Kit

Presence-only — a stocked first aid kit carried in the car.

Common certifications: none — no certification standard involved.

Window Breaker / Seatbelt Cutter

Presence-only — usually just a requirement to have one on board, sometimes with a mounting/accessibility rule (e.g. ARA requires one reachable by both driver and codriver, which in practice often means a separate tool at each seat). Like fire extinguisher, your gear set can carry more than one: use “+ Add another tool” to enter each physical tool separately with its own photos, rather than one shared photo pool for the category.

Common certifications: none — no certification standard involved.

Spill Kit

Presence-only — an onboard kit of absorbent material to contain an oil, coolant, or fuel spill. Most common in endurance and drag racing.

Common certifications: none — no certification standard involved.

Parachute

Drag racing only — mandatory past a body’s speed threshold (e.g. 150 mph and up for NHRA).

Common certifications: none — no certification standard involved.

Rollover Protection

Rollover Protection

Whether a cage/roll bar is required, and what’s expected of it, usually depends on your car’s body style (closed roof, convertible, open with no windshield frame, or open-wheel). Rally bodies typically also check when the cage was logbooked/built. This category has its own dedicated entry flow (body style, tubing spec, logbook) rather than a certification dropdown — see the category card’s own fields for what a specific body asks for.

Padding certifications (a sub-attribute, where required): SFI 45.1, FIA 8857-2001 Type A.

Chapter 5

Will My Equipment Pass Tech?

Enter what you actually own, checked against one specific sanctioning body. Each item resolves independently, and an overall PassTech verdict sits at the top of the page — red, yellow, or green.

Walkthrough

1. From My Gear (Chapter 3), click Will my equipment pass tech? on a saved gear set — it loads that set’s entries straight into the checker, and the Equipment Summary shows which gear set you’re checking. Pick a sanctioning body and, if it has one, a class — same pickers as Chapter 2.
2. For rally bodies that require one, an Add codriver gear toggle appears, giving the codriver their own set of personal items alongside yours.
3. Check Hide Not Required Gear, next to Rollover protection, to collapse the category list below down to just what this specific body requires or conditionally requires — handy once you know what you’re bringing and just want the short list.
4. Expand any category and fill in what you have. A category with nothing entered yet shows a No data tag until you do. Pick the certification standard printed on the tag from the dropdown, or tap Scan tag photo to read it straight from a picture of the label — PassTech suggests a standard and any printed dates, and you confirm before anything is added. See Chapter 4 for a full walkthrough of every field, multi-certification items, and the privacy implications of scanning a tag photo.
5. The PassTech verdict banner near the top updates live as you fill things in: red for a real violation (something required is missing or rejected), yellow when only an optional or conditional item is still unresolved, green once everything required checks out.
6. ← Back to My Gear checks for changes since you opened this set: nothing changed, it takes you straight back to My Gear with this same gear set reopened; something changed, it offers Save changes to this gear set, Discard changes, or Cancel to keep working.

When the selected body has one on file, the same View sample tech sheet box from Chapter 2 appears here too, right below Source — a preview of the actual checklist a tech inspector works from at the event.

The verdict banner

The banner lists exactly which items are causing a Fail or a Conditional result, grouped the same way as the category list below it.

Pass (green) replaces the banner entirely once every Required and Conditional item resolves to an accepted certification — no red or yellow line items left.

Exporting a PDF report

Download PDF report, at the bottom of the Equipment Summary, saves the PassTech verdict, the items causing a Fail or Conditional result, and the full category-by-category breakdown — everything currently on screen for this body and class.

Chapter 6

Where Can My Equipment Race?

Enter your gear once, and PassTech checks it against every ruleset it knows — the option built for racers who run more than one club, series, or discipline with the same gear bag.

Walkthrough

1. From My Gear (Chapter 3), click Where can my equipment race? on a saved gear set — there’s no single body to pick, since it checks all of them at once.
2. Only check the equipment I have, next to Rollover protection, drops any category with nothing entered from the results entirely instead of failing every ruleset outright for it. The category list below hides those empty items too, with a reminder to uncheck the box again once you want to add more.
3. Hide Not Required Gear, right next to it, collapses each ruleset’s expanded result panel (and the PDF export) down to just the categories that ruleset actually marks Required or Conditionally required — without it, expanding a ruleset lists all 24 categories, most of them “Not required,” which gets long fast once you’re checking dozens of bodies at once. This only trims what you see in the results — it doesn’t touch the equipment entry form below, since there’s no single ruleset here to judge that form against.
4. Add a codriver’s own gear with Add codriver gear — only affects rally bodies that require one.
5. The Filter box lets you pick just the disciplines you actually race — uncheck any of the eleven (or tap Select all / Deselect all to jump straight to just the one or two you care about) and every result below, the Equipment Summary counts, and the PDF export all narrow to match. Handy if you only care about, say, autocross and HPDE and don’t want 30 drag-racing and karting results in your way.

Equipment Summary badges

In this option, the number on top of each icon is how many of the currently-filtered rulesets accept that exact item as you’ve entered it — it updates live as you narrow the discipline filter or edit the item, so you can see at a glance which pieces of your gear are the most restrictive across bodies.

Reading the results

Results sort into three buckets, and within each bucket, into a section per discipline:

• Eligible — every ruleset you fully satisfy.
• Eligible under condition — everything required is fine, but an optional or conditional item (e.g. an arm restraint that only applies to open cars) is still unresolved.
• Does not meet the requirements — anything missing or rejected outright.

A ruleset also gets an amber “Additional equipment required to compete” badge when “Only check the equipment I have” hid a required category that would otherwise have failed it — a reminder that the count isn’t the whole story until you fill that category in too.

Ice Racing

Autocross

Each discipline heading carries its own icon (from the same set used in the Filter box), so the results read the same visual language throughout the page.

← Back to My Gear checks for changes since you opened this set: nothing changed, it returns you to My Gear with this same set reopened; something changed, it offers Save changes to this gear set, Discard changes, or Cancel to keep working.

Exporting a PDF report

Download PDF report, at the bottom of the Equipment Summary, exports exactly what’s currently on screen — every ruleset grouped into Eligible / Eligible under condition / Does not meet the requirements, respecting the discipline filter and the Hide Not Required Gear setting.

Chapter 7

Buyer Mode

Check one piece of gear before you buy it — a helmet for sale, say — with no gear set to build and nothing saved to My Gear. The single-item equivalent of Where Can My Equipment Race?: enter the item once and see every sanctioning body it’s eligible for.

Walkthrough

1. From the main menu, choose “Buyer mode” — option 3.
2. Upload a photo of the item, or tap Or pick the category yourself instead to skip straight to a category dropdown and enter the certification by hand. See below for exactly what happens once a photo is analyzed, including what happens to any certification tag visible in it.
3. Once the category is confirmed, fill in what you have — the same category card used everywhere else in PassTech (Chapter 4 is the full field-by-field reference), already expanded since there’s only ever one item on screen here.
4. Pick the disciplines you actually race in the Pick the disciplines you are interested in box — all eleven are checked by default, or tap Select all / Deselect all to jump straight to just the one or two you care about.
5. ← Check a different item instead, above the category card, clears everything and returns to the upload screen.

When the first photo is the tag itself

The same photo analysis Automatic mode uses also reads any certification tag legible in the shot — whether that’s a dedicated close-up of the tag, or the tag just happens to be readable within a wider photo of the whole item. If a certification comes back along with the category, it’s added the moment you confirm — you don’t need to separately scan a tag photo too.

If nothing legible turns up on that first photo — a whole-item shot with the tag hidden inside the shell or under a liner, say — Buyer mode says so directly and offers a second upload specifically for the tag, instead of leaving you to notice the category card’s own Scan tag photo control on your own:

That second upload runs the same tag scan as Scan tag photo (Chapter 4) — it only suggests a certification, nothing is added until you confirm it — and the same privacy note applies there: this photo is sent off-device to Google’s Gemini vision model, not processed on your phone or computer.

Eligibility badges and expiry warnings

Once you’ve entered something, the category icon itself picks up two small badges — green on the top-left for how many of the currently-filtered rulesets accept this exact item, red on the top-right for how many don’t. Tap either one to jump straight down to that bucket in the results below, without hunting for it in a long scrolled page.

If the item’s certification is due to expire within the current calendar year, an amber Expires badge appears next to the item name — the same warning Chapter 5’s verdict banner shows, but here it’s visible on the card’s own summary line, collapsed or not, so “eligible now, but only for a few more months” is obvious at a glance before you buy. The same date appears near the top of the exported PDF report.

Reading the results

Results sort into the same three buckets as Where Can My Equipment Race?, grouped by discipline and filtered to whatever’s checked in the discipline box:

• Eligible — every ruleset this item fully satisfies.
• Eligible under condition — accepted, but an optional or conditional detail is still unresolved.
• Does not meet the requirements — rejected outright by that ruleset.

Expand any ruleset for its full reasoning and source citation, same as everywhere else in PassTech.

When it’s one specific body’s certification window that’s closing soonest — rather than every accepting ruleset expiring on the same date — that body’s own summary line carries its own Expires note, right next to its name, whether the ruleset is expanded or still collapsed. The badge on the card above only ever shows the earliest date across all of them, so this is where to check which specific rulesets are the ones actually running out.

Exporting a PDF report

Download PDF report saves the item and every currently-filtered ruleset’s result to a printable PDF — the same report shape as Chapter 6’s, for this one item.

Chapter 8

Scrutineer Mode

Pick the discipline, sanctioning body, and class you’re inspecting for, then scan gear one piece at a time for an instant PASS / FAIL / CONDITIONAL call — built for working tech inspection at the track, not for building a gear set.

Walkthrough

1. From the main menu, choose “Scrutineer mode” — option 4.
2. Pick the discipline, sanctioning body, and (optionally) class — the same picker as Check the Rules. It stays selected across every item you scan, so you only pick it once per car, not once per item.
3. Upload a photo of the item, or pick its category yourself — exactly like Buyer mode, including the automatic tag-detection and follow-up tag-photo prompt described in Chapter 7.
4. Fill in what’s on the item; the verdict banner below the category card updates live as you go.

The verdict banner

PASS once the item is accepted, FAIL when it’s rejected or unrecognized, CONDITIONAL when the rule itself is conditional and still unresolved. Before you’ve entered anything, the banner is just a plain prompt to fill in the item above, rather than a verdict of its own.

The moment a verdict lands, the category card above folds itself shut on its own — its certification detail isn’t needed side-by-side with the banner anymore once they agree, so the reasoning moves down into the verdict banner itself and the screen collapses to just that one box. Tap the card’s header any time to reopen it and see what was entered.

Scanning the next item

Two buttons replace the usual back link once an item resolves:

• Scan another [category] — stays on the same category, but doesn’t just drop you back into a blank card. The category is already known, so it skips straight to Upload a photo of the certification tag for the next physical item — the button a scrutineer checking a whole grid of helmets, say, taps over and over, scanning one tag after another without re-picking the category or hunting for the tag-scan control each time. Continue without a certification falls through to the ordinary blank card if you’d rather enter this one by hand instead.
• Scan a different item — clears both the category and the entry, back to the upload-or-pick-category screen.

Either way, the ruleset and class you picked at the top stay selected.

Exporting a PDF report

Download PDF report saves the verdict and the item’s full reasoning against the selected ruleset and class — the same report shape as Chapter 5’s, for this one item.

Support

Listing your products on PassTech

PassTech gives recommendations to users by providing a shopping link where they can purchase the required safety item. If you are interested in having your products linked in PassTech for users to easily find your store and product page, contact us at passtech@frogracing.us. We can setup affiliate links and provide advertisement space.

Getting Help

Reporting a bug

Found something that doesn’t look right — a rule that’s out of date, a certification PassTech doesn’t recognize, or the app just behaving unexpectedly? The most direct way to report it is on GitHub: github.com/cecchet/passtech/issues. Include what you were doing, what you expected to happen, and what happened instead — a screenshot helps a lot. If you’d rather not use GitHub, email passtech@frogracing.us instead.

Contact us

For anything else — a ruleset you’d like PassTech to add, a rule you think is misread, or general feedback and questions — email passtech@frogracing.us. That’s the same address bug reports go to, so there’s no wrong door.

Frequently Asked Questions

Common questions

Q: Why is the app named PassTech and the logo a frog holding a watermelon?
A: If you look closely at the logo of the app, you will see that the frog is holding a watermelon. The frog in Frog Racing is called the frog because it is French. And in French, watermelon is pastèque, which sounds exactly the same as PassTech! You get the French joke free of charge too :D

Q: Automatic mode can’t scan a photo for tags — what’s wrong?
A: The most common cause is PassTech hitting its daily quota for photo analysis. Try again later — often the next day is enough — or enter the certification details manually in the meantime.

Q: Why is image scanning/recognition sometimes slow?
A: PassTech sends each photo to an outside vision service to read the tag or classify the item, and that service occasionally takes longer than usual to respond — a scan can take up to two minutes before PassTech gives up and asks you to try again. Most scans finish in just a few seconds; a slow one isn’t a sign anything’s broken, just a busy moment on the vision service’s end.

Q: Does PassTech have information on turbo restrictors or minimum weight?
A: No — PassTech is focused entirely on safety-equipment requirements. It doesn’t check class-eligibility rules that aren’t related to safety gear.

Q: My sanctioning body or ruleset isn’t listed in PassTech — what should I do?
A: Email passtech@frogracing.us with a link to the rulebook and we’ll add it.

Q: There’s an error in how a rule is interpreted — how do I get it fixed?
A: File a bug report on GitHub with the details (see Reporting a bug above) and we’ll review and fix it.

Q: I can’t find the tech sheet for the sanctioning body I want to race with.
A: We don’t have every tech sheet, since not all of them are publicly available. If you can send us a sample at passtech@frogracing.us, we’ll add it.

Annex

Sanctioning Bodies & Rulesets

Every ruleset PassTech currently checks against, grouped by discipline, with a link to its official source document where the body publishes one and the date PassTech last reviewed it against that source.

Know a ruleset PassTech should add, or spot a missing certification or an error in one we already cover? Email passtech@frogracing.us.

Annex

FIA Technical Lists

For FIA-homologated equipment, PassTech can check the homologation number printed on the tag against the official FIA Technical List for that standard — catching a number that isn’t on the list at all, or one FIA has since revoked (see How a category card works in Chapter 4). Grouped below by equipment category, with a direct link to each list’s current PDF on fia.com.

“Checked live” means PassTech actually looks up the number you enter against that list’s parsed data right now. “Cached only” means PassTech has the current PDF saved but hasn’t yet built the number-lookup for it — for those, double-check the number yourself against the linked PDF. Rollcage padding (FIA 8857-2001) is not covered by this feature.