Solved

How to adapt the tyre strategy to the weather?

My view on this for all it's worth.
For the tyres the thing that mostly matters is the amount of water currently on the track. The weather icon shows what to expect soon, if it's currently raining and water remains or gets more or if it stopped and the track is in the process of drying up.

I'd be happy if I'd know. It would be easy to say there was too much water on the track, but if that was the case then why those two cars on intermediates didn't do much better? It's not their cars because in training on same tyres they were closer to the front row team than in qualify.
However I, and some others made threads about that here in forum, experienced occasions when the training lap times are off by 1 second and more and after switching to another part of the game and back, or better relogging, they return to normal. No idea what causes that either but maybe (a longshot maybe for sure though) it's a similar cause.

The drivers prefer a setup purely on the current weather and not the current track conditions. Depending on those conditions shortly after a weather change a different setup than the suggested can still be better, but usually not for long.


Not decided in different ways as such, everything follows the real weather as long as everything works, but the delay when the weather change actually happens can differ by quite a lot. For example some months ago in MJL it was roughly 10 minutes after the icon on the iGP page changed that the Rookie race got their weather and another 10 minutes or so later the Pro and Elite race finally followed and those delays remained quite punctual for most races. Now in Anti-Nowhere the delay between page and the first response in races is a bit longer, more in the range of 15-30 minutes, but all tiers change about at the same time with a delay of 15-30 seconds between each other.
Since I can't look at the track I can't be sure but it seems that doing training laps also is handled in some kind of server instances and depending which server takes it, or whatever other reason causes it, run at different time delays and thus it happens that lap 1 is in sun but pretty wet road, lap 2 is raining, lap 3 is sun again and almost dry surface and lap 4 is absolutely raining again and all that in the 30 seconds or so it takes the game to come up with the results for those 4 laps. So training is a good way to establish conditions if the weather is stable but completely falls through during a weather change.

The switch happens right when the weather changes. No rain = dry setup even though there is still water on the track, rain = wet setup (wings and ride height +12), snow = snow setup (+18, snow as weather is not actually shown in game but if it's snowing in reality this setup comes into play) and I don't know what in the weather data is finally triggering the monsoon setup (+25).

It should be based on what you expect to happen during the race. Both should play a role but the weather icon has the more important role because there are at least 10 minutes between finalizing the strategy and the race and the icon shows how the weather is now and which the track will follow.

It was said the game is getting every 10 minutes a weather data update from weatherunderground.com's API, but that info was several months ago and might be outdated now.

I call "snow setup" "heavy rain setup", because this higher ride height is also seen in such condition.

I've already had those weird practice lap times. I think it's related to server healthy: if servers are ok, practice times will be ok.

That description could work too, although the two times, one being Hungary this season, I can recall the driver going for it it was really snowing in reality. Else the game mostly just asks for the +12 one and rarely the +25 one like in Malaysia.

Yes, it does looks like server overload issue or so. Once it even looked like it was always using the tyre I (tried to) select before the current one, on that occasion I remember getting super soft lap times with hards selected, a rare occasion with the lap time being actually faster than expected.
You're welcome.

Yes, after iGPmanager gets aware of a weather change the icons on the main page and practice are the first to change but especially the race sessions need some more time to follow. I can't be sure about training and even less so with qualifying because I can't see the track there and the effects I interpret as such that it's similar there could also just be glitches.
Anyway, what I mostly meant there is that even after the weather truly changed the track will lag behind. If it stops raining there's still water remaining on it, slowly running and drying away for several minutes, or, albeit usually faster, water building up once it starts raining. That water level on the track is whats truly affects the cars as in tyre needs and lap times and the weather icon shows where this ongoing process is headed, water in rain and especially, because a slower process, eventually a dry track without rain.

I can't remember a dev reply and myself I don't see it as any critical issue, just something that happened sometimes, as it doesn't breaks the team or ruins a race. Especially if it's a server (load) issue it'll (mostly) resolve itself with server optimizations.