Guide

iGP Manager : Beginners guide (July 2017)

Preface :

Hey all it's Joey ! Before starting this guide I would like to thanks Justin Sutton (Box Box Box Gaming) who helped me a lot to learn the basics of iGP with his videos when I started the game 2 years ago. iGP has changed a lot and a new version was launched in August 2016, it's now my turn to help new players who start this adventure. Also keep in mind this is a beginner guide suited for people that never played the game before or are back from the old version of iGP.

Here we go ! First of all and especially if you never played to the old version of the game I advise you to read the game tutorials by tapping on each tab in the left corner (Home, Next race, etc ..), there will be a brief presentation of what each tab does. This is the end of my guide, hope you enjoyed it ;)


















Joke apart, there is a lot more to say about each tab and I'll try to give you some hints in order to help you taking your first decisions as a manager. At first we'll see the important steps after the creation of your team, then we'll review the other tabs, and finally we'll finish with an exciting part of your journey : the live races !

Let's get started !

If you're reading those lines I bet you've already created your team but you might have missed some options, so click on the Team tab at the left and then click on the Edit button under your team name. By default it uses your email plus some numbers behind such as "joeymclane8561347" so I advise you to rename your team if you forgot to do it earlier. You can also customize it by changing its main color and logo, then don't forget to press the Save button at the top right.

To finish with the basic options I advise you to go to the Manager tab and then to click on Edit under your name to check/change your timezone in the General options, it will help you not to miss your future races.

Congrats you're now ready to join a league but before it we have a couple of important things to do :

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(This guide now is in its final version so I don't plan to edit it in the future, keep in mind this is a beginner guide and as such this is not expected to be very technical or to go into details.)

1st step : Get new sponsors

You start your advendure with $50m and 30 tokens, those currencies are really importants in iGP so the first thing to do is to get new sponsors in the Finances tab (right section). "Income" is awarded after each race and it is better to focus on it as the "Bonus" is only awarded if you succeed in your race objective. Getting a 3 tokens per race sponsor for the primary slot and a sponsor that pays well for the secondary spot is the best to do, this is important as new managers tend to forget it or select wrong sponsors driving them to debt after a few seasons.

2nd step : Meet your staff and hire new driver(s)

Ok, let's head to your garage by clicking on Drivers and Staff. As you can see you start with 2 drivers and 3 staff members, I advise you to click on their pictures to see more informations, you can hover attributes to get more details too. In the Contract section you'll be able to extend or break their contracts.

A good thing to do here is to click at the top left on the 3 dots "..." of their profiles and then to add your entire staff (including drivers) to your shortlist, it will be easier for you to keep track of their contracts in the Home tab, also congrats you've just got your first achievement ! You can see them in the right section of your Manager tab.

Let's head to the Transfers page now, this is where you'll be able to acquire new drivers and staff, stars rating is really important for staff but individual attributes are more importants for drivers. As a fresh manager I advise you to get 2 young drivers (under 25yo) if your drivers are older, the younger the better as they will train faster ! Just browse the list and select a driver you want, place a bid and wait the auction to finish. You can place multiple bids but be careful as they won't be refunded even if you lose the auction ! After acquiring fresh blood don't forget to change your drivers or staff roles and keep in mind you'll still pay reserve drivers & staff even if they don't take part to races so I advise you to sell them if you don't want to be in trouble with your finances.

It's time to train your drivers now (Training). Basically you'll train them after each race or each day if you aren't in a 7 races per week league, you can change the training option by clicking on its name, for new drivers I advise you to focus on the physical attributes first in order to get high stamina as it has a double impact : It will help your drivers to be faster at the end of races by losing less health and more health means more training to do after a race so they'll improve faster ! But don't overtrain them or they'll be slower, you really want them to start a race at 100% health.

Once that training will be done (19 or 20 in "Stamina") an important area to focus will be their driver abilities, and as for how long you'll keep your drivers ? I told you to get young ones so you'll keep them as long as possible because changing drivers really is expensive and can cripple your finances, once you'll reach the elite tier of your league it will be time to acquire new drivers and to focus on one fixed attribute : the "Talent", but for now don't worry as it has close to zero influence at low to medium levels.

3rd step : Join a league

If you have not done it yet it's time to do it, just click on the League tab and then browse for a league well suited for you, I advise you to click on Filters to set your preferences : The most important ones are the time the race starts, the number of races per week and the race duration, you can also activate "Show league with foreign languages" to see a far more important number of leagues if you're not afraid to race with strangers.

Once in a league, you'll be able to see the current season rankings in each tier as well as talking with other people in the league chat, if you wanna see the drivers rankings and past seasons rankings you have to click on Standings in the left menu.

4th step : Build your team

Last step before preparing your next race is to head to the Cars tab, here you can choose your 3 suppliers by clicking on their names ("Engines, "Fuel", "Tyres"), they'll give you a +1 bonus in the selected attribute, you can also spend the design points you'll win after each race thanks to the Upgrade button. Review allows you to check the best teams on each area and to select which areas to spy on in order to get a small boost, finally the Livery editor button will let you customize your car (unity web player required).
Edit 6th August 2019: Changes to suppliers since this guide was written means that supplier bonuses are added or subtracted from car design. E.g. Murk Engines will give a positive 10 dp in Acceleration and negative 6 dp in Fuel Economy. Choose your suppliers carefully to optimise your car design. 

Best attributes are made of 4 stats also known as the "The big 4", they include Acceleration, Braking, Downforce & Handling and are the "speed" stats. Then come 2 important attributes : the tyre economy and fuel economy, finally the 2 last stats (cooling, reliability) are less importants so don't focus on them before the last races of a season.

In the right section you can Repair your car, I advise you to fix your car condition (Fix car) every race but only to replace your engine 1 out of 2 races if you're in a 2 cars league. Also if you're playing on mobile there is a blue button which will give you free parts after viewing a 30 seconds ad (10 parts per day limit).
Edit 11th August 2019: The ten ad limit for parts no longer applies. The limit for parts has been reduced to 5 but incentives to watch adverts have been added elsewhere. You can watch two adverts in the "Finances" tab to gain game money (the amount of money appears to be dependant on level) and eight adverts in the "Training" tab which will heal drivers at a rate of 5% per advert (so the limit is 40%)

Let's go to the Headquarters now, it is located in UK near 80% of all other F1 teams and it will give you various bonuses. As a beginner you want to focus on the "Design" and "Manufacturing" centers first as they give you more design points and parts per race, then an important building to improve will be the "Technology" center to improve your boosts (DRS & KERS) during races.

Don't focus on other buildings for now or maybe the "Simulator" center as a 4th option, other options are less importants and can be upgraded when you levelled your 3 or 4 previous centers to your current "level cap". Also don't forget to click on the "Technology" center once built and to buy both upgrades because it works differently.

Final step : Prepare the race !

You did it ! You're now ready to prepare the Next race, just click on this tab and let's see what to do here. This is where you'll spend most of your time preparing your next races, you can see a brief presentation of the track with various informations such as circuit data (history) and weather forecast, the second section (Setup) is very important so let's review it in detail :

Here you can test your car on the track, drivers will give you feedbacks to adjust your setups in order to make your car faster, also you'll get fuel data and you'll be able to compare your lap times against other teams by clicking on the Practice results button.

Last section of this tab is where you'll set your Strategy :
Usually and for 50% races, 2 stops (3 stints) and 1 stop (2 stints) are the best strategies, SS/Soft & Hard Medium are the preferred tyre compounds as Medium Hard tyres rarely work, also there is no rule about tyres so you can use the same tyre compound all race long if you like it. "Advanced options" are important in weather changing conditions where wet tyres are good, you'll learn how wet weather work in the future, for now just set "wet full (blue) / 2mm" for the first option and "inters (green) / 1 lap" for the second option, it will work in most of the situations.
Edit: Since the tyre characteristics were tweaked by the devs in Sept 2018, in 50% races it is now Hard tyres that rarely work.
Additionally, although the iGP game itself does not set rules about tyre compounds, a number of leagues have now adopted local rules that specify you have to run more than one compound. Where such a rule is in place it is normally limited to the Elite tier.

"Default push level" is the MOST IMPORTANT option as strategy + push level will affect more than 80% of your performance. Push Level also known as "PL" is how high a driver will push on their tyres to heat them and improve his pace, more push means a faster car for a few laps or sectors but then hot tyres means you'll lose 1s, 2s or even 5s per lap ! So it's better to set this option at "PL1" = "very low" or "PL2" = "low" most of the time not to burn tyres and to keep an optimal performance during all stint long. As for Hard tyres you'll be able to push them more (between PL2 & PL4) depending on the tracks and temperatures.

Other important tabs are the Home tab, this is your dashboard and it will be mainly used to check your mails and quick check your staff contracts (in "shortlist"), also the last option will allow you to Spectate other races currently running.

The Hall of Fame is where you can compare your team against other ones in different areas such as total number of races, wins, retirements and more. The main ranking is the "Reputation" and is a live ranking of all managers in the game, it is determined after each race depending on your results and the teams you've faced.

The Forum tab is a quick link to open the forum. There you can discuss with other F1 fans, ask for help, report a bug or add a suggestion for the future of the game.

The last tab is the Shop, here you can buy tokens with real money, convert them into virtual currencies or buy parts & engines. This is also a good way to support the game and the devs if you like what they do. Tokens can make your progression faster (especially in the Headquarters & Training tabs) but iGP is not a pay to win and has a feature named "level cap" so you won't be able to improve your HQ buildings over your manager level or to buy drivers & staff over that level, and someone doing great choices with push level, strategies and live management will still get better results.

Let's head to the live races now ! But ..... Wait ?

I was lying :p There are 3 more little tabs at the bottom left of the page, the first one is the Settings where you can configure your options, the second one is the Help & technical section of the game where you'll get more detailed informations about iGP rules, don't forget to read it as this is very interesting and you'll get your second achievement by clicking on the "I've read the rules" button. No need to explain the last one as this is a simple log out option ..

For those still reading this guide it's now time to talk about something that really makes iGP different against most of the other F1 management games : the live races with other people. But let's talk about some important things to know about races :

Your race preparation (Next car and Cars tab) is locked 10 minutes before the start, so make sure everything was done before this limit. Then the qualifying starts automatically and you cannot manage your team during it (maybe in a future version of the game).

In qualifying each driver does 1 "fast lap" with the tyre compound selected for the first stint, the push level and the fuel are the same for all drivers to give them equal chances, also drivers can do mistakes during that lap. 5 minutes before the start of the race a red button will appear in place of the Next race tab, this is where you can check qualifying results but be fast as only 2 minutes later it will transform into a Go to race button and it will bring you directly to the live race.

The race viewer is about 3 parts :

The first one at the top left is your "main race view", next to it is the chat where you can talk with other people watching the race, then is the strategy tab where you can adjust your live strategy and finally a settings tab to change various options. I advise you to set your scroll sensitivity at 100 and to click on "save" to get a better race experience, also arrows can be used instead of the left click to navigate between cars :
- "up" and "down" to navigate throught all cars
- "left" and "right" to select your 1st and 2nd driver

The second part at the top right is where you can check track informations (laps, weather) and browse the live rankings with a lot of informations such as gaps, sectors and tyres history in the last tab. It is faster to click and go down or up to browse all cars.

Last part at the bottom is your control panel where you can give drivers direct orders and check the health of your cars and drivers with a quick strategy tab to adapt to live weather changes.

The tyre temperature is really important, I advise you to keep it between the red and blue limits, preferably in the upper half, most of the time your PL will be at the minimum (PL1 = left = very low) but it is recommended to push tyres at the end of a stint just before a pit stop and sometimes at the start of a race (only if your tyres won't naturally go in the red part). Red means "too hot" and that means your car will be slower so be careful here and most important part : have fun playing with other people.

When weather is changing your drivers will pit and change tyres regarding their "advanced options". As for rain there is no real rules and a live management will always be the best option, still here are a few things to know : Usually wet (inters / green tyres) are good starting from 0.3mm, then full (wet / blue tyres) become faster at 3mm. Although wet weather can go up to 5mm, weather can cap at a point from "3.0mm" = normal rain to "5.0mm" = heavy rain that's why I told you to set your advanced options at 2mm earlier because it will be better to start with wet full at 2.8mm for example if it continues to rain.

Last trick regarding all tyres in general, at the left of their temperature you can see their life. SS/Softs are faster but can not be used for a huge amount of lap as they quickly wear and under 50% life tyres wear even faster making them even slower so I advise you to avoid the 20% "limit" as tyres are almost dead at this point.

The red battery button is the KERS, you can control it manually by clicking on the screen or with your "S" and "K" keys to control your left and right drivers KERS in that order, it will make your car faster while accelerating. The DRS is automatic and will improve your max speed in a straight, you can get it if your gap with the car just in front of you (including lapped cars) is under 1 second (so anything up to "0.99s").

To finish this guide here is a list of all finish lines and DRS zones (in green) as they are currently missing in the track overlay. This is important because DRS + KERS management (alongside with tyres temperature & strategies) are the keys to success in iGP.

The season calendar is made of the 2009 F1 calendar (with the old silverstone circuit) but don't worry as new tracks are planned to be added/updated in the future :

Joey (aka. Kimi Raikko, Rachel Brown, Ross Bong, etc.) is the best player in the history of the game, everyone. Hear, hear!

EDIT: Btw, shoutout to Justin (Box Box Box gaming). Really enjoy his commentary in AOR Xbox.

His tips are very useful as he is the best manager in the game ofc.So listen to him.It only takes you about 10 min to read the guides

Medium tyres got turned down a little because people said they where too fast.
I'm always complaining Supersofts are too fast. so if SS where tuned down along with S. It would bring M tyres back into play, mostly likely then it be more shouting M are too fast and we be back to where we came from.

Medium tires are quite useful tbh.They can be faster in certain conditions.idk why some ppl think it rarely works.

They don't work as good as they used to because Hard tyres are more effective one push level higher

As a manager who's raced in a competitive league in beta testing for the new iGP, as well as a couple of highly competitive leagues after the new iGP came out, I agree that Mediums rarely, if not never work, especially in a league with experienced, competitive managers.

Back when beta testing was in its early stages, Mediums were a one-size-fits-all tyre. They were the fastest tyre no matter what strat you had, perhaps even no matter what push level you had. This led to Mediums being nerfed, a much needed nerf. It was overly nerfed, however. They're not as fast as Hards over a stint, because you can push harder on H tyres, and Hards also have less tyre wear. These 2 factors are the main ones that have led to Medium tyres becoming near obsolete.

While you might still be competitive on Mediums on a select few tracks (maybe Bahrain if you can qualify above the H runners, then have to contend with the H runners being faster for most of the stint), they are oftentimes not the best tyre to go on.

@Boomer : No I'm not ;) Actually I think we're 4/5 people to be really close in pre-race and live management skills.

@Duc Anh : Sorry, I've juste made this guide a little longer :p

To all : Also keep in mind this is a beginner guide designed for people that never played the game or are back from the "old iGP", I actually think to make an "advanced guide" with pro tips designed to experienced players, but for now this is the first version of the beginner guide and I'm going to edit a few subsections during the next couple of days.

Medium tyres are roughly 0.400's slower than Soft but only 0.300's to 0.200's on some tracks faster than Hard tyres

SS 0.500's faster than S
SS 1.000's faster than M
SS 1.500's faster than H

S 0.500's faster than M
S 1.000's faster than H

M 0.500's faster than H

The wear rates should be the thing to tighten the gaps between them, If something is too fast it can be hit with an extra amount of wear to slow it down.

If you say so, Joey. :D And cheers for your hard work. Even for a beginners' guide, it is very detailed and comprehensive, though I'll mention that I think you forgot to highlight the manufacturing facility to produce parts.

Still, I'll be looking forward to reading more great guides from you. Keep it up!

@James Greer : (For pros) : Actually I found Meds only useful in one specific situation : In qualifying at Monza with high temperatures. This is true for 50% races and 1 stop strat with M/H. Softs heat too much and end with a bad tyre wear after 9 laps (they need to do 12/13 laps), so in that particular situation M/H actually are better than S/H but H/H give them a serious competition.

For the remaining of the tracks only S/H or even SS/H worth it as 1 stopper strats, and when it comes to use Meds or Hards the second ones are always the preferred option as they wear longer, they can be pushed more and are not really that slow (your data come from practice but I noticed in race those gaps are actually differents).

@Boomer Kid : Thanks to notice it, actually I did not forgot it but wrote "Technology" 2 times by mistake, it's now corrected ;)

Yep I just did my practice and I can see that the Medium was like only 1 tenths most is 2 tenths faster than the Hard compound(same driver) at Bahrain.Thats why I see you guys say Medium rarely works

Also just wanna say I hope this thread gets pinned.

Are you sure? the first time i started I kept pressing the "bid" button, ending up putting 30 tokens on a driver and losing the auction, no token was given back, then I started a fresh account. Is there anything I'm missing?

Looking forward your pro guide tho! keep up the good work, this game must go on!

I hope you don't mind I pinned this Joey :)