SGT
After playing for long in a very competitive league, I feel like there are stats of the game completely left apart as well as features of the game not being really exploded.
- Reliability: Managers always get new engine and car parts for each race, so how much usage the engine has doesn't matter at all. My request is that the impact of how much time you lose as your engine is being used in a race should be higher. Reliability will make the usage speed lower, and so, teams with good reliability can be significantly faster in last stages of a race than faster cars with worse Reliability.
- Cooling: Another forgotten. It should make you easier to keep tyres in optimal heat instead of been related to the engine so reliability is for engine and car parts, Currently, people seem to not care as the impact is low. The idea is just to make it more differential. A good Cooling will make you almost impossible to get overheat or cold tyres and so you can push whatever you want or need.
- Tyre economy and fuel economy: Just buff them so difference between 0 and 200 is not just 1 or 2%.
These are no random events, as people here seem to not like them; they are skill based.
Reliability impacts during the race, determine the rate at which your components degrade. For example, lets assume your char as 200 Acceleration because all of your components are at 100% condition, as the race progresses, lets say by the 50/60th lap your condition is now 90%, your acceleration is now effectively 180.
This is not exact math of how things work but this gives you a general idea.
Cooling Impacts fuel and acceleration of your engine works in the same manner as reliability but for the Engine component. Please read above for more information on the idea of how it works.
Fuel and Tyre Economy do greatly impact the game.
Higher Fuel Economy makes you faster early race (non-fuel leagues), as you can easily fuel 10 Litres less than your competitors that can sometimes give you an decisive advantage (we've seen this between the top two teams in our league, one fuels much heavier is normally outpaced by the lighter car in some tracks, where in others the heavier car is faster than the lighter car as they can operate better within the temperatures better by having higher capabilities of push available all race)
High Tyre Economy makes you faster in Refuelling leagues as you can push longer, the differences are subtle due to 4 Dry compounds. The tyre economy itself doesn't extend the lifetime of a tyre before it degrades, making it last x laps longer. Instead what it does is provides changes to their phases of grip.
Phase 1 100-90% Full Speed / Temps increase quickly at push 5
Phase 2 89-75% Slight loss in pace / Temps increase faster at push 5
Phase 3 74-65% Slight loss in pace / Temps decrease faster at push 5
Phase 4 65-55% smaller loss in pace / Temps stagnate below push 5
Phase 5 54-45% Stagnant-To losing pace / Temps begin to fall below Push 5
Phase 6 44-30% Significant Loss to pace / Temps begin to fall at all push levels
Phase 7 29-10% Pace Cliff / Temps cannot / Temps fall faster at all push levels
Phase 8 9-(above 0)% / Temps
(This is not exact numbers but points at certain curvatures of progression of tyre life from a lot of data)
Tyre economy moves that margin of when 'phases' begin and end and sometimes high economy can remove phases all together to the point it looks like Phase 1 lasts 100-80% (again not exact values)
Sorry for vagueness. This is learned and obtained knowledge. Spreadsheets are your friends and retaining a record of actions, track position, temperatures, laps, weather and everything helps with this.
TL/DR:
All car attributes have significant impacts. You are in a single car league with low count and you have finished less than 2/3rds in your last league stint. You have a loong way to go on the learning front :)
Good luck
