Solved

Development

Yes and no. Yes, every season is started with a new car and thus you will, usually, loose design points. No, you don't start at zero, or rather one point, but with a car which design points are determined by the CDs of the prior season, a little bit every race. So to get the best starting car into next season you need a 5 star CD with a good strength/weakness set during the whole season, but since you're still very low level and level quickly this would be a waste of money and token. So better still wait a bit, get a good one at level 6 or so and keep that one for a few more levels until you think that things settled down and your team is ready for the investment to have an effect that matters.