Skip Setup Launcher

Fuel's default shortcut forces you to slog through the setup launcher pop-up before starting the game. Having to go through this launcher wastes time and is pointless once you have the game setup the way you like it.

The default shortcut points to "GameSetup.exe" in your FUEL install folder. If you tried to be smart / sneaky, and just run the "FUEL.exe" file you got a pop-up saying the game has to be ran through the launcher. Nuts. Guess you're out of luck.

Nope.

They hid the main game launcher as "SecuLauncher.exe". I assume this stands for "secure launcher", because FUEL uses SecuRom DRM. It probably kicks off SecuRom to verify DRM, then kicks off FUEL.exe to get the game going. You could right-click on "SecuLauncher.exe" to get a short-cut on your desktop for it. However, to make a nice short-cut with the FUEL logo/icon, etc simply... Now you have a FUEL short-cut that looks like the original, but skips the launcher.
 * 1) Select / Highlight your FUEL desktop icon (the one that loads the launcher)
 * 2) CTRL+C to copy it
 * 3) CTRL+V to paste a copy of it
 * 4) Right click on the copy
 * 5) "Rename" it to something nice, like "Fuel Start" (you can rename the old short-cut to "Fuel Setup")
 * 6) Right-click your new short-cut again
 * 7) "Properties"
 * 8) In the "target" line, you'll see something like ... "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\FUEL\GameSetup.exe" ... replace the word "Gamesetup" with "SecuLauncher", so you end up with something like "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\FUEL\SecuLauncher.exe" (your Steam / FUEL install folder may be different depending on how you have it setup; the file name is all we're changing, though.)
 * 9) Click "Apply"
 * 10) Click "Ok" to exit
 * 11) Done