Driver progression and talent

So, I hired this driver with 18 talent, and my question is: WHAT DOES TALENT DO!
I searched for the driver with the highest talent I could hire, and he just isn't that fast.
My driver skills are (in order of rank):
Talent: 18
Bravery, Work rate, Wet weather: 6
Decisions, Feedback, Reflexes, Fast and Slow corners: 5
Aggression, Influence, Stamina, Overtaking: 4
Experience: 3
Morale, Teamwork: 2
Anticipation, Charisma, Composure, Focus: 1
His driver page

Which attributes should I train, or what should I do in general? He is off the pace constantly and his talent doesn't seem to be helping him.

Higher talent will pay back in the future when he's just progressing better. You would probably also notice if he would be aside a driver with similar stats but lower talent.

For now, the skill levels are keeping him back. Try focussing on training physical (stamina/reflexes) and speed at first. Physical will give you much pleasure as the driver will be able to keep his speed over a race distance. After that try training attacking and defending.

No one really knows exactly what it does, except for the developers of the game. The one thing we do know for sure is that the higher the talent, the higher the speed graph appears. EG: Someone with 1 talent and 20 20 20 speed, their graph won't be anywhere near full, but someone with 20 talent and 20 20 20 speed, the graph will be full.

Kind of the same thing as experience. The higher the experience, the larger the defending/technical graph is. But no one really knows what it does.

Youen,

You mention a speed graph. Is this a tool available within the game for subscribers? and if so where can I access it?

Many thanks

Oh no Tony, it's available to any registered member on iGP, subscribed user or not.

The speed graph is part of the hexagon image that shows Speed, Physical, Technical, Defending, Attacking, and Mental, like this for example: http://gyazo.com/86a7770d4f1e626a1d939e3432810014  That's an example of my 1st Driver.  He's at a high talent level (not disclosing that or morale information), so the Speed is almost to the top of the hexagon.

And I believe that Speed, Morale, Physical, and Health are the most important factors in Drivers that are fairly young.

What Jeremy said. Just open your drivers page (Team -> Staff -> Your driver). The height of the speed graph is determined by talent. The height of defending is determined by experience.

Height of defending is determined by experience?  That would explain why my 2nd driver's graph isn't as high as I thought it would be.  Thanks Youen.

And what about experience? Is it static like talent, or it increases with the number of races the driver does?

it increases over races, what amount i dont know exactly.

Thanks for that Jeremy, 

Just hoping that I wasn't missing out on a trick.

Good spot I hadn't realised that.  For eample, tal 13, 20, 20, 20 speed - http://igpmanager.com/play/?url=team-driver/66872 vs my driver, 19 tal, 19,19,19 speed (Probably be at 20 after the next race) - http://igpmanager.com/play/?url=team-driver/170608 . What is odd though, is my other driver with identical talent and speed stats is slightly lower on the graph - http://igpmanager.com/play/?url=team-driver/168840

 I think therefore, that this is the best/closest indicator we will get as to what talent does, it opens up a greater scope for the other attributes to reach a higher level than less talented drivers, meaning a more talented driver can have lower stats but still be better than a less talented one with higher stats. Exactly how I think talent should be utilised as a key component of a driver's makeup. Well done developers 

@ Experience question: Like talent, no one really knows except for the developers. Or if someone has worked it out, I haven't seen anyone mention it before. You can have two identical drivers getting almost identical results and one of them will jump from 4 experience to 14/15 experience while the other one stays way down at 8/9/10 experience. I certainly haven't figured it out yet but I have a suspicion it might have to do with a "range" of results instead of just a heap of wins (originally what I thought might make it go up). I've noticed heaps of drivers on the market who have high experience also have a large amount of DNF's... but not all of them.

@ Josh: I can't tell the different between your two 19 talents tbh re: the difference in height of the graph, but if there is a difference there it's probably down to a very small atrophy margin. But also about the talent thing, I'm not sure how badly it affects all areas, and you'll still often find lower talent drivers being just as fast as 20 talent drivers, so I dunno. The one thing that seems clear but to me about talent is that generally speaking, 20 talents qualify more consistently than lower talent drivers. Atleast in my experience. During the race though, I don't notice much difference between 16/17/18/19/20 talents etc.

Since the patch to remove Experience from the stats that suffer atrophy, I've found experience increases by 1 every 10 races.

i  had a level 6 driver with 19 talent , in 2 seasons he got 10 level by training and won every race in a league , so talent pays off driver with higher talent trains faster