Guide

iGP Manager : Advanced guide (July 2017)

Preface :

Hey all, guess what ? I'm back for an advanced guide this time but before it let me explain you a few things : During the first months when I started the game I read a lot of posts in the forum to understand the game better, also we used to be a couple of managers debriefing our races after the final lap. Other things that helped me was to follow Justin Sutton's philosophy and to try a lot of different stuff such as other engines, tyres, suppliers and strategies, finally doing mistakes was a good way to learn what not to do during live races or during pre-race & pre-season management.

I already stopped to play due to personal reasons and I won't be able to go back in the future but before leaving I wanted to share with people what I know about iGP, I hope that will help most of you and even some of the most experienced managers in the game. I'll talk about almost everything in details with a team optimisation goal so be sure to have enough game experience before reading this guide as this is not suited for new players.

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This is the first version of this guide so I'm going to edit and modify a few things in the next days, also I'll add new parts but I want to read them again and change some lines before to post them. You can tell me if I forgot to talk about a feature or if something was unclear. Keep in mind this is an advanced guide and this is best suited for experienced managers and high level teams.

1st part : Improve your car (design, spying & staff)

It's not a secret for anyone but better cars usually are faster so the first thing to do when you want to improve your team is to get the best possible design at the start of a season. To do it you need the best Chief Designer (CD) and also to have a good knowledge about car attributes, last thing to know is that there is a design cap at the start of a season and no stat can be over 50 at this point (if we except suppliers bonuses). Finally you need to have participated in all races during the previous season to get the best possible design as it improves by a slow amount after each race. With a 4.5 stars CD you can expect to start with 43 for most of the stats with the exception of the CD's strength at 50 (cap) and the CD's weakness at 22, that's why it's more important to have a "good weakness" rather than a good strength.

You already know "The Big 4" with Acceleration, Braking, Downforce and Handling but to be honest they aren't all equals, ACC is a little better than the couple BRA/HAN and DWN is a little behind but still is an important stat, you really want one of those 4 attributes to be your CD's strength. Then come 2 stats (Fuel economy & Tyre economy), FE is more important and I don't advise you to start a season at 22 (weakness) but you can afford it with TE as it has less impacts on your car. Cooling and Reliability have little to no effect so I advise you to get one of them in weakness as it won't affect your performances. A good (but expensive) way to improve your weakness if you cannot find a good CD is to get 2 CDs with different weaknesses and to swap them mid season.

The swapping strategy (2 CDs) also is the best because thanks to the starting cap (50) you can get 2 attributes at 50 if you have two 4.5 stars CDs and your 2 weaknesses will be at 33 which is better than 22 in the case you cannot get a "good weakness". Those + 7 points will help you a little but keep in mind getting a better CD will give you more than 7 points in "the big 4" with more points in the other attributes, also starting with a better design means you'll get less points by spying and by experience I can say that little gap is caught in 3/4 races by other teams. Last thing regarding CDs and staff in general is they are really rare at 5 stars so a 4.5 stars CD will do the job or a 4 stars CD if it has a perfect strength (big 4) and good weakness (cooling, reliability) especially if you cannot afford this strategy as this is expensive (1 more contract to pay each race).



The spying efficiency also known as "research power" is determined by the combination of your CD & TD stars (TD = Technical Director), also lower level teams get a small boost. You can select all, 1 or a couple of attributes. A little trick to know here is that spying is using a "ceil function" which means you can get higher amount of design points if you use it smartly, I won't explain it mathematically so here are 2 simple examples to understand how it works :

Spying on 2 attributes with 20% research power :
- for 2 points difference : 2 x 0.20 = 0.40 => + 1 point
- for 9 points difference : 9 x 0.20 = 1.80 => + 2 points

Spying on 1 attribute with 40% research power :
- for 10 points difference : 10 x 0.40 = 4.00 => + 4 points (and not + 5 points)
- for 11 points difference : 11 x 0.40 = 4.40 => + 5 points

So anything between X.01 and X.99 gives you a higher amount of points, also keep in mind you'll always get at least 1 point even in the situation where you are only 1 point behind the best teams in all attributes and spying on all stats at the same time.

During the first half of the season I highly advise you to put your design points and spy on "the big 4" as this is the best to do if your FE & TE aren't at 22, I'll discuss about FE more in details later because there are a few exceptions even if it is between 22 & 43 for example. Once those 4 attributes will be maxed it will be time to focus on FE & TE and finally if you have enough time on cooling and reliability for the last races but as I said earlier they have little to zero influence.

As for specifically where to put points and spy on ? There is no real rules but your goal will be to maximize your spying rewards while putting design points on the best attributes, you'll have to adapt to what other managers are doing, for example the "2/2" strategy = put points on 2 stats and spy on the 2 other stats or the "4/4" strategy = keep an average difference with 4 stats and spy on those 4 stats were initially my most used strategies and are really easy to understand, but other strategies are potentially better : "3/1", "2/1", "2/4". Here is an example with 2 spying strategies :

"2/2" strat :



"4/4" strat :



Last trick about spying, if you're not sure on which attribute to spy on you have the possibility to reload the page during the race and to change the selected attributes before the end of the final lap. Here is the quick link :
Research



For Doctors only full stars matter and they will improve your training by spending less health during training sessions :
5 star => - 10% health
4 star => - 11% (same for 4.5 star)
3 star => - 12% (same for 3.5 star)
2 star => - 13% (same for 2.5 star)
1 star => - 14% (same for 1.5 star)
0 star => - 14% (same for 0.5 star)

Keep in mind young drivers train faster, also a driver level far from your team level means a better training efficiency, over that level the training will be very slow and you'll only get + 3% if I remember it correctly. Last trick regarding your DR : If your drivers are fully trained there is no need to keep him as there is no driver atrophy (stats loss) for now so don't renew his contract and a very cheap DR (only 50k per race) will take his place and will save you a lot of money !

Finally staff can decide to retire when you offer them a new contract, it starts from 65 yo and at 70 yo all staffs decide to retire.

2nd part : Take better decisions (drivers, fuel & engines)

Drivers also are very importants if you want to get good results, when you hire a new one you have to focus on a young driver with high talent first, 20 talent is the optimal but if you cannot find any a 19 talent driver will be good. Talent is for high level & elite teams, of course if you're in pro talent doesn't really matter as only trained drivers benefit from that attribute. Then you want a driver with high stamina, low weight and high driving abilities in that order.
Edit 11th August 2019: A manager with many years experience has recently carried out tests, the results of which suggest driver weight currently has no effect on lap time. However, it is still recommended that drivers are trained in "Physical" to reduce weight because once all of the other trainable attributes (everything except Talent & Experience) are maxed it is not possible to further reduce driver weight.


Talent is a fixed attribute, that means you cannot improve it by training and it will give you full potential of your "driving abilities". As an example a 20 talent driver with the same stats (everything at 20) will be better than a 15 talent driver. Experience works in a similar way and gives full potential to "mental" stats with an exception : You cannot train it BUT it regularly improves by 1 or 2 after 17 or 20 races. Here are 2 pictures to easily understand how talent & experience influence other stats (old igp graph) :

20 talent & experience driver with maxed stats :



=> max "speed" and "defending"

15 talent & 10 experience driver with maxed stats :



=> "speed" and "defending" are reduced

(talent influenced "speed" and experience influenced "defending" in the previous version of iGP).

Only a small percentage of managers know it but additinally to the "bid" option (1 token) and the "buy now" option (9 tokens), there is a 3rd option to instantly buy a driver for only 3 tokens. It is available when a driver or staff is not in the transfers list and I call it the "black market" because they aren't supposed to be available at that time but if you have them in your shortlist or if you find them by luck in your old results you can hire them, also this is how you can transfer a driver (or staff) from a junior to your main team but be fast as after some minutes he will be available for everyone in the transfers list.

Last thing to know about drivers is that they decide to retire when you offer them a new contract, it starts from 35 yo and at 40 yo all drivers decide to retire.



Now, let's talk about something only a few managers really use about the fuel economy. Usually more FE means less fuel used during a race but that doesn't mean you have to improve it at all cost even when you've just maxed "the big 4". Let's take 2 examples to understand it better :

Belgium, 9 laps :
FE at 51 => 28.2L used so 29L means 0.8L remaining = + 0.8kg
FE at 55 => 28L used so 28L are enough with 0L remaining = + 0kg
=> In this situation it is better to improve your FE

Italy, 10 laps :
FE at 76 => 25L used so 25L are enough with 0L remaining = + 0kg
FE at 88 => 24.7L used so 24.7L means 0.3L remaining = + 0.3kg
=> Here we can see this is better not to improve your FE

(*L = Liters)

You have to stop to think that "higher FE is better" and you have to think about "less weight in excedent at the end of a stint is better" as only total weight really matter and affect your performance. Sometimes it will be better to improve your FE but not always, that's also why I told you there was an exception with FE in the 1st part, you have to rely on your past data and to find an average point with weight. That's why I rarely upgraded FE up to 100 but instead I always tried to find the best possible combination with weight excedent for each of my stints.



Let's finish with engines and parts now, as I said it is better to repair your car (parts) every race and to change your engines only 1 out of 2 races but there is an exception. If your team is high level and especially if your HQ buildings are built that means you use less tokens and you can use those tokens elsewhere, the best place to do so is to buy new engines and by the way to have fresh engines every race. It will improve your pace between 0.05s & 0.25s in qualifyng (maybe less during the race), also new season means parts & engines are automatically refitted so you can take advantage of this if you're in difficulty with them.

3rd part : Improve your management (strategies, race data & weather)

Qualifying is a key part in elite as teams and gaps are really close especially for 50% leagues so most of the time you have to adapt your strategy on your opponents rather than directly using the best tyres for the race, that's why I advise you to use SS & Softs everywhere for the qualifying stint except during summer for obvious reasons. The new version of iGP gave a new dimension to strategies as Hard tyres can now be used effectively and also your drivers cannot pit together or the second one will have to wait 5 seconds. For 50% leagues most of the time 2 stops strategies are the best pick followed by 1 stop strategies and a single 3 stops strategy can work exclusively in Europe because it has a very short pit lane, but in summer 1 stop strategies and Hard tyres become king and for 100% leagues they also are a better choice, also keep in mind what I said in my beginner guide and try to avoid Med tyres as they are almost never good.

Here are the pit time durations for each circuit :



Hard tyres as well as wet tyres also give a new dimension to live mangement as those conditions usually require a higher PL to be used. A good thing to know is that very slow corner such as turns 3 to 6 in Turkey or turn 1 in Italy give you the opportunty to use PL5 for a short amount of time an to overtake a car without DRS or KERS which is extremely rare otherwise, also this can be used if you're in front of a car and if you want to create a little gap in order to force your opponent to use KERS to stay in DRS range. To finish with PL and this is valid for all tyres compounds I also advise use not to use a single PL for the whole lap but rather than to use 2 different ones, for example PL2 for slow corners and PL1 for straights and almost to never use PL1 with Hards except in the situation where you want to trick your opponent and not overtake him with the DRS to be in the best position for the final lap but be careful as this can be dangerous and it's best to use in Brazil and for short DRS areas.



Last thing to know about strategies : There can be up to 16 teams (32 in 1 car per team leagues) so the pit position is pretty important as the team pitting last can use 0.2 more liters than the team pitting first, this is especially true for the first and the last stint of your race as they use "grid to pit" and "pit to finish" distances which are differents from "pit to pit" distances. Usually low number teams pit firsts and high number teams pit lasts but there are 3 races with reverse pit order :
- Australia
- China
- Great-Britain

Little paragrah regarding setups to tell I advise you to keep setups data as well as fuel data for obvious reasons as they will be really useful for next seasons, for example I kept those data in a tab and I found that for fully trained drivers wing levels were the same with the exception of the ride height, also here is an example on how I kept setups, fuel & strats data all together for convenience :

Setups :



Data :





It's time to talk about weather and especially wet weather, dry to wet and wet to dry conditions are really fun because everything is uncertain and you have to take live decisions to change your strategies in a small amount of time, this way you can get better results than you cannot normally get. For full wet races 1 stop strategies are almost always the best because wet tyres don't wear that much and most important thing is that there is no DRS available ! DRS only is available for dry races or under 1mm. There also is a trick to know about wet weather & setups, normal rain (= 3.0mm) is +12/+12 from dry setups, heavy rain (= 5.0mm) is +25/+25 but is pretty rare, there also is the snow which is really rare where setups are +18/+18.

Finally, starting from 3mm wet full tyres become faster than inters but they can be too hot so inters with a higher push can actually be faster after a few laps because as you already know hot tyres are slower in iGP. Last thing to know about wet tyres (full wet and inters) is that the wetter it is the lesser they wear and also the lesser they heat, at 5mm wet full heat as softs in dry conditions but wear longer than Hards !

To finish this guide you have to know that iGP uses real time weather with a 10/15m delay and it was officially revealed they use wunderground stations, also there is a minimal cap meaning no temperature can go under 5°C in iGP. You can refresh the page during the race to directly check incoming weather (don't forget the 10/15m delay) :

https://igpmanager.com/app/d=forecast&trackId=1

Just change the last number (Id=1) by the desired circuit from 1 to 17 and check "current conditions".

Also here are some of the wunderground stations I used to have in favorite to prepare future races and to check incoming weather :
1. Australia
2. Malaysia
3. China
4. Bahrain
5. Spain
6. Monaco
7. Turkey
8. Great-Britain
9. Germany
10. Hungary
11. Europe (Valencia)
12. Belgium
13. Italy
14. Singapore
15. Japan
16. Brazil
17. Abu Dhabi

PS : Some stations aren't the most accurate but I was not able to find any better or to find the actual stations iGP is using.

Edit: As iGP moved to a new weather provider, you can look there (https://darksky.net/) for the track info.

4th part : Other things to know (Manager level, traffic effect & pit blocks)

Your manager level is quite important because it determines a couple of things in iGP all linked to the "level cap" feature. This level cap prevents you to buy drivers & staff over your team level as well as improving your buildings (Headquarters) over it, you can train drivers over this point but that will be slower (3% gain per session). The max possible level is 20 and each level takes more and more time to reach, roughly it will take you 400 races in the best conditions to reach it. Also there is another kind of level cap linked to tiers themselves this time : Level 8 in Rookie & Level 14 in Pro, over that level teams receive a "ballast", that means they will be heavier in weight to compensate for their better drivers and buildings to keep the competition fair enough for other teams.

About experience you earn a base 40 exp per race with a 20 exp bonus for each level difference with the highest level team in your tier, here is an example of how dynamic experience is awarded :
- level 16 elite team with level 19 team => 40 + 3 * 20 => 100 exp per race
- level 12 pro team with level 16 team (cap is 14 in pro) => 40 + 2 * 20 => 80 exp per race
- level 12 pro team with level 16 team => 40 + 4 * 20 => 120 exp per race

You can (re)check your last race review (results, exp gained and reputation changes) thanks to this link :
https://igpmanager.com/app/d=raceReview

Also, here is a brief tab to recap the total experience required per level :



(* optimal conditions with a level 8 team in rookie, level 14 team in pro and a level 20 team in elite / 2 seasons in rookie, 3 seasons in pro and the next seasons in elite)



Traffic effect also mentioned as "clean air" is easy to understand and important to master as this is where you can save a lot of KERS or force your opponents to use their KERS : It simply prevents 2 cars to stay close together even if they have a similar pace, most of the time you don't have to worry about it because the DRS will be enough to compensate the time loss the previous lap but for urban tracks with a lot of slow corners this effect is more important and it's almost impossible to stay in DRS range each lap without using a little bit of KERS, the extreme case is Monaco where it's not possible at all.

Let's take an example with this track because this is where I noticed it the first time : If we take 2 cars together the gap between them will go up to 1.8s / 2.0s after a fuel laps (already 1.2s in average after 1 lap), this is why in this situation it is best to quickly use your KERS to take the lead and benefit from clean air or to save your KERS avoiding heavy KERS battles during the first laps, still don't let too much cars overtake you or you won't be able to overtake them back. Another example with 3 cars together : The 1st one will create a gap thanks to clean air, the 2nd and 3rd cars will be affected by traffic effect so they'll lose DRS range from the 1st car but they'll stay together for a few laps before the same effect happening between them, if you have read carefully you know that will happen when the first car will have created a 1.8s / 2.0s gap.



Let's finish this part with pit blocks also known as "pit rapes" or "prapes" if you aren't afraid by this word, for those who don't know it can happen during a pit stop when 2 or more cars enter the pit lane together, usually a car with a low number entering the pit lane in 1st position will have an important chance to being blocked by a higher car number, this happens because there is no left lane priority but rather than a right lane priority in iGP so the other car can harshly block you and get out of the pits in front of you (this is true for regular pit positions). In the other way (higher car number entering the pit lane first) the same won't happen (unless this driver is blocked by a 3rd car). It was a real problem in the previous version of iGP because up to 32 cars were able to stop together and it was possible to lose your gap (over 1.5s were needed to be quite safe) with 1, 2 or even more positions lost in a single pit stop !

Don't worry as things are differents now, still pit blocks can happen but they are rarer and affect cars less. This is due to the fact 2 cars of the same team cannot stop together or the second one will have to wait 5 seconds so less cars pit together now. The other reason is that boosts (especially the DRS) are more powerful now, in the past DRS was only used to follow a car in front with almost no chance to overtake him without KERS (the exception was Italy). Now you can just follow the car that blocked you in pits and get that position back the next lap because DRS is more powerful, Brazil is an exception because it has a really short DRS zone.

5th Part : The myth of mental stats & miscellaneous

Here comes the final part, nothing specific here only some very short ideas and advises as well as an old iGP myth.

"The myth of mental training" (for old iGP players) :

In the previous version of the game there used to be a problem with mental stats and that myth caused us not to train mental stats because most of people thought that was bad for a driver, here is the truth about it : Actually mental stats were not bad but physical and speed stats gave more impacts over a driver pace, the true problem rather came from an old pre-race setup called "gearing" : 75 was the optimal gearing because starting from 80 (higher mental stats) the gain from those mental stats was not enough to compensate the loss caused by a very high gearing, drivers became slower and irregular because of this, that's why the best was not to train mental stats until 2/3 and the old driver stats graph looked like a "rectangle of speed". Don't worry that bug was corrected and I highly advise you to train mental stats after physical and drivring abilities now.



Miscellaneanous :

The position in the train (group of cars together) is important, especially in the final stint because you'll need to use more KERS than the 2 cars in front if you aren't in the best positions, also you have to think about which cars are going to get the final DRS in the last lap because one car won't have it and this can be a huge deal !

SS are offensive tyres and you should not stay behind Softs in the first few laps after a pit stop to use them at their full potential, under 50% health (for SS) Softs will be faster and it will be time to adopt a defensive approach and try to follow harder compounds, this is exactly the contrary to do with Softs and harder compounds, don't stay behind old SS if you know you are faster except for one DRS. You have to use your tyre advantage even if you're racing against a car with the same tyre compound but 1 lap older.

If you leave from a league you have to pay a 10% fee of your current balance, you'll also lose your current design and will start with a very few points if you join a new league so keep this in mind before switching leagues because it takes a full season to build a design for the next season.

Last thing to know : Apart from the level cap and the starting design cap there is a third kind of cap regarding the max possible design : It is 50 in rookie, 80 in pro & 100 in elite.

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*cough *cough Part 8:Engine lol

@Duc Anh : I modified the part 2 title as I'm going to talk about it in this part ;)

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Added Part 2.
Added paragraphs about staff & driver retirements.
Edited the part about Doctors as 0 star DR is 14% health loss (same as 1 star).
Edited weaknesses values as they changed.
Minor text changes.

Hello again, Joey! Looking forward to seeing you complete this guide.

One thing about TDs as you mentioned. At the moment, I am running two teams with 0 star TDs, and I strongly suspect they do not influence pit stop times anymore. I know in most tracks, the time spent in the pit lane (not just stopped in the pit box) amounts to somewhere around 17 seconds on average, and I still get that with a 0 star TD.

Is this with teams created after the new iGP format?

This account existed before new iGP and running a 0 star TD on it yields similar pit stop times to one of my newer accounts which also has a 0 star TD. Looking at lap-by-lap data, my pit stops times are also more or less similar to managers with high star TDs. Anyway, hovering over the info circle for TDs doesn't state anything about them influencing pit stops, neither does the help: rules & regulations page.

@Boomer :
Thanks, I deleted that paragraph and just finished to add the part 3.

PS : I'll talk about traffic effect (clean air) and pit blocks ("prapes") in another part.

@Joey: I don't even know that snow could be in iGP manager.
Also during my experience of the game,I realised that the difference amount of fuel doesn't matter in the pit stop phase.For example, the Italian GP that just ended yesterday,I pitted for Hard tires on lap 6 till the end of the race and my pit stop time was 4.5 sec compare to the 3rd place man who pitted for SS on lap 9 to run for 9 laps had a pit stop time of 4.6 sec.Is this on purpose or what?

Epic Job joey! Im new manager and is sad to see people like you leaving the game. You are like Senna in iGP ;)

I like the guides, but you are giving an awfully large amount of information away. Setups, pit timings, actual weather stations...

Joey, thanks for doing the service I couldn't muster effort to do. :) I never intended to do anything more than a basic guide, though.

Greg, I think putting this information out there may spoil the fun for some managers, but it may force the developers to continue to tweak and implement new things for the future. It will help prevent things from getting stale. Basically what I'm saying, the sooner the information is available, the sooner it becomes stale for everybody. Making Joey's guides eventually irrelevant :(

When there is a game, there is eventually a superbly comprehensive walkthrough. At least Joey is not giving exact strats for each track, with exact fuel numbers for the numerous stints, exact push levels for each part of the track, etc.

Hello Joey,

Thanks alot for your guide, it helps me alot to view the game in different perspectives. I am actually a beginnen and sometimes its hard for me to understand the shortcuts in your sentences like PL or KERS. Is it possible to explain it the first time you use it in a sentence? It would help me, and it think other managers. Thanks and keep up the good work.