Suggested

New league teams

I don't believe newcomers to leagues are given any performance boost. Usually, people who join a league and then dominate, is because they are better at car development, use better racecraft, use better strategies. Often an element of all three.

Honestly, I think you've had one of the top managers in the game join your league with a secondary account. Even the manager name Andy Incognito points to this being a strong possibility.

Just to be clear, the N+1 bug was removed in February so the fact they joined for the final race of last season has not overpowered their start design for this season. You already know they don't have more design points than anyone else in the league because, if they did, the post race report from your TD would tell you that Cartier Accura have the most developed car.

It is almost certainly, as I said above, a combination of better design development, better racecraft and better strategies. 

I see you're running 100% race distance and the no refuelling rule is active. In this scenario don't underestimate the value of the Fuel Economy design attribute. Also, being able to calculate fuel load accurately is pretty important. If you end the race with more than a litre of fuel in the tank, you loaded too much.

Could you please direct me to where it says this so I can take a look? As the information you are receiving appears to be completely wrong. I'd like to hunt it down and push for a correction.

This is how it actually works:

- A new joiner to a league before the start of the season will be given a car based on the rating of their CD and designed around their strengths and weaknesses. This can be slightly advantageous in some circumstances, which is why you see people reset their car by leaving and rejoining a league sometimes. But if you use the same CD throughout a season and it is 5 star, then there is no difference. Also if the joining manager does not have a 5 star CD, it can go the other way and leave them at a disadvantage.

- If a new manager joins mid season, they are awarded some DP to try help them catch up with the development stage of the season. However, this comes nowhere close to making them equal with other cars and will usually leave them with a car 100's of Design points behind everyone else in the league.

Joining a league part way through a season is disastrous in terms of design as you have discovered.

To get similar design to everyone else in the league you need to join during the break between seasons with a 5 star CD.