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Max starting points (rookie)

Hi Foudre.

IMO at your level competing in a Rookie tier employing multiple CDs is not necessary, the money would be better utilised developing your HQs (Tech Centre and Design first, followed by manufacturing).

Unfortunately you are in a password protected league so it's not possible to fully understand your circumstances but I imagine at the moment you will be levelling up quite quickly. The rate will depend on the level of the teams you are competing against.

A CD that is the same level as the manager/team will yield the most dp for the following season. As you level up the effectiveness of the CD reduces. Because only the active CD is contributing to next season initial design, the chances are by the time you get around to making any reserve CD active you will have levelled up and you will be looking to exchange them for CD with a higher level. The wages you've paid whilst they have been sitting as a reserve will have been wasted.

So IMO you would be better to get a new CD each time you level up or if you're struggling with finances every other time.

Don't overlook your Technical Director who teams up with the CD to determine your research strength.

At your current level buy them as you need them and sell them rather than hold them in reserve because by the time you need them again you will have levelled up and they will have become less effective. At your level in a Rookie tier there is no benefit in having reserve staff.

Chris... You don't have to own the CD until the end of the season for them to contribute to next season design. They will contribute to the design whilst active and as soon as you don't need them they can be sold (even before the end of the current season) without any detrimental effect to next season design.

When you get to higher levels it is worth holding on to good CDs and paying their wages to sit as reserve because you level up much less frequently so they remain effective for multiple seasons.

Hi Chris.

I think you are right about reliability and cooling both being equally useless.

However, at the back of my mind from a couple of years ago I recall Joey McLane and Marcel Smid used to prioritise development of cooling over reliability (after everything else was maxed out) because according to the in-game tip, cooling reduces engine wear during the race. We all know worn engines are slower which is why in a competitive elite tier you need to renew them every race. For this reason, if I have a choice between CDs, one with cooling weakness the other with reliability I always employ the latter. I have no data to back this up, it's personal preference.

In his advanced guide Joey says:

When Joey recommends different weaknesses it is in the event you can't find any good CDs. If you find one that it strong in Acc but weak in an important area such as Braking, you can compliment this with a CD that is strong in Braking and weak in say fuel economy. The second CD cancels out the Braking weakness of the first and you only take a small hit in FE.

Also, this was before the "Three CD" strategy became widespread amongst top managers.

Chris.

The logic I used is that if engine wear throughout the race is reduced then I would expect a car with high cooling development to be progressively faster than a car with low cooling development. I.e. They both start the race at 100% but towards the end of the race one car should have a less worn engine than the other and therefore be faster.

In order to collect all of the data to prove/disprove this theory you'd need multiple test accounts all running in your own private league so that you can remove as many variables as possible. TBH I don't have the time for this so what I say about cooling is mostly speculation with a little observation of what a couple of the legendary managers did when I raced against them. So please don't take it as a fact.

Regarding weight. Another manager much more experienced and knowledgeable than me has run tests which suggest that currently driver weight has no effect on performance. Despite this I always train my drivers down to minimum weight because who knows if or when the devs will make subtle changes to the code to make driver weight a factor.

Fuel weight definitely makes a difference, this is most evident in wet races when all cars are on the same tyre compound and DRS is disabled. It's one of the reasons that the overcut can be so effective in this game. Providing you don't push the tyres too far a couple of extra laps with low fuel can see you jump the car who pitted earlier and came out on a heavy fuel load. Sorry, I don't know precisely how much lap time is added per litre of fuel, something for you to find out in testing.

PS. Any time soon we're going to get a roasting from either José or Yunus for breaking forum rules and straying off-topic ;-)