Christmas Suggestions : Qualilottery !

Hey ! I'm Joey and I have something important to say :



Seriously, let's talk about something everybody already met and which can be really frustrating : the Qualilottery !
I know many of you have ever wondered :
- "How can my driver with less fuel be behind my other driver ?"
- "How can my 2 drivers with same strategies and levels be so far from each other ?"

The facts are pretty simple :
- "Each driver gets one qualifying lap on a clear circuit"
- "Drivers can make mistakes"

That's how you can qualify well with 1 driver and your other driver can be some positions behind or more, even with less fuel !
As a consequence this is my head before every qualifying session :



In F1 :
Qualifying consisted in a 12 laps session, basically 4 runs of 3 laps each.
They changed to a single lap for a couple of seasons but qualifying were too random and they added another session (2x single lap), but finally they changed again to the new system everybody knows :
- 3 sessions named Q1, Q2, Q3 where drivers qualifies and can do 2 or more runs (with 1 or more quick lap)

In iGP :
There are not 22 or 24 cars but up to 32 cars in the grid and gaps can be 2x or 3x tighter than reality (don't forget to remove GP2 cars).
To be more concrete I will take two examples in the league in which I run since I started the game : (International GP Championship)
- Germany S81 > less than 0.8s between the whole grid !
- Australia S81 > P1 Jelinek, P27 Martin +1.1s with same strategies ! (tyres, fuel, etc ..)

I hope you understand better how qualilottery can and actually hurts in the game.

The solution :
Add the current qualifying session seems to be complicated, it's possible in coding but will result in server overload, so a good compromise should be to have 3 single laps instead of 1 to make qualifying looking better and have more fun and possibilities in the race.

New possibilities :
It will help in many areas, for example cars won't be stuck behind a lucky qualifier and something more interesting : We'll can finally use more strategies such as starting with 1 less lap for first stint which is not really possible at the moment without taking very big risks.

Thanks for reading, don't forget to comment and add your ideas in this thread ;)



PS : Corrections in red as Jack stated in this thread : Fuel is not taken into account for qualifying.

First of all the complaints department can be found here!:P

Facts are very simple indeed.
There is no KER or DRS in qualifying.
The Qualifying is not a lottery it is a complicated well calculated system that took many hours of hard work to perfect. The Qualifying system is calculating push level, fuel load, tyre compound, weather, tyre temp, drivers, engines suppliers, fuel suppliers & tyre suppliers.
High fuel versus Low fuel on the same tyres. The long run always finishes ahead. (within reason)
Drivers apart on the same strategy. Different height drivers preform better on different tracks.

No you are not Joey :D

I loved how much editing you put into that message, but I disagree with its point. Every driver makes mistakes, and I am enforcing that in the new iGP we should BE ABLE to see drivers make mistakes in races for instance, perhaps bringing out SC's (people who don't play F1 2015 will know what THEY are) and the like. So KEEP one-shot quali as it is, or at least let us SEE the drivers on different forms.

PS. Everyone knows your name isn't Joey, nor is it Chandler, nor is it Mitt the Romney Wonder. Not sure what I was going with for the MtRW so IDK

I agree with this post xD

Qualifying isn't a lottery from my experience.



"Qualifying is conducted on low fuel with tyres at optimal temperatures"

I think in Qualifying  sometimes the difference between 2 drivers from the same team to big.
1 and 15 , 15 and 30 or 10 and 25 for example can happen but 1 and 27 is to much difference i think.

In real life, Vettel qualified P16 in Abu Dhabi, and Raikkonnen P18 in Austria. It's unrealistic for a driver to always qualify in the same place.

I like the idea of Q1, 2 and 3 Jack :)

As you said "in real life" but are we in real life or is it a game ?
No need to give the answer. Because of that J.Greer, J.Pinsker and you have totally misinterpreted the subject.
I plus other managers DO NOT WANT to qualify on "pace only", we just want equal chances for everyone with a decent qualifying.

I have to repeat myself :
- we can be 50% more cars on the grid (32 vs 20/24)
- gaps can be 3 times tighter (0.8s), more or less the current difference between Mercedes and Ferrari/Williams for .. 32 cars !
- overtaking is Monaco-like and you cannot rely only on your pace to achieve it

Did you say "reality" ?
I know some of you expect a game to be as close as possible to the reality, but keep in mind iGP is not a simulation but a management game. I know some of you would like retirements during races (failures, crashes), but it's not possible !
We are all in the game for the same reason : entertainment, some of us are even paying to live a better experience and you cannot say to them :
- "Sorry, Pastor provoked a massive crash in the first corner, you plus 3 other cars are out of race, please come back later"

In such a situation all fun is dead and they leave, sometimes forever ..
Developers know that better than us, that's why they never added such features (if car refitted).

But let's get back into the main issue :
A difference of 15 or more positions in qualifying is unacceptable and likely synonymous of "out of race" for most of us. For the biggest mistakes (over 0.5s), I notice they happen often and sometimes for both drivers, in a whole season I would say around 15/20% for everyone (I checked multiple teams).
I know you like it so let's talk about reality : For Vettel in 2015 it was 2 big mistakes out of 20 races (10%), I missed the first but for Abu Dhabi that was entirely caused by a failure (power loss). Just imagine if they only had a single run like 10 years ago ..

With 3 laps, THERE WILL STILL be errors but more for 5/10 places than 15/20 currently and less often than now. And lastly if some of you still not understand what I'm talking since 2 posts look at this picture :

Hello Jack,
I'm glad you answered and completely understood the problem.


I would say a big mistake can be considered over a 0.5s gap, but sometimes it can reach 1s or more.


Thanks to clarify this point.


I think this solution is the best for us and the easiest to apply :
For common leagues (less than 6500 avg rep), there is a natural gap between cars and that won't make much difference (maybe a couple of positions at most). But for good leagues (6500/7000) and very competitive ones (7000+), this is where these changes are needed and where we'll see the biggest differences.
There will still be errors for 3 laps but less chances to see them or at least the smallest, and gaps will be closer. Thus, there will still be differences between drivers but less often and for less positions and that's all what we're expecting, no more.
Last but not least, 3 laps is lighter for server load and easiest to code than a 3 sessions qualifying (Q1, Q2, Q3) with multiple laps for each.

The fact is, although this game has not many technical relations to F1, and many people may not think of it like F1, but let's face it; when people think of this game, what do they think it is based on? That is right, Formula One. So, to Ross in particular, I say that.

So where did you check to find this information about multiple teams? It wasn't the qualifying results page!
It doesn't tell you the driver made a mistake.
It doesn't say what push level the driver was on.
It doesn't say what their fuel load was.
It doesn't say what tyre they used.
All it gives is a position, lap time, top speed & average speed.

It's pretty easy to find out, I'm in the league for 12 seasons so I have a good idea about what each manager does about design. But the most important part for comparison is between the drivers of a given team.


Push Level does not influence at all on the performance in qualifying.


Like Jack said in this thread, fuel acts as the same way as Push Level = no influence at all.

To make things easier, the only elements that matter are :
- drivers
- suppliers
- design (plus condition)
- tyre compound

So basically you can take all but remove Push Level and Fuel Load from the equation.

I believe that the best suggestion for this issue is (rather than having Q1,2 and 3) just a straight 3 lap qualifying session. This is so each driver has a chance to set a good lap based on their ability, tyre compound, suppliers and car parts and if they are less experienced then they will be more likely to make a mistake on all 3 of these laps. I think this would make it more stable from race to race.

Well then that just throws a spanner in the works that does with all this guess work. how can you guess he should be here and she should be there lol

Sure we may as well set the qualifying to reverse grid order of last race, winner starts last & last starts first. I don't see that it matters where you start.