Guide

New safety car and race flags - Update 3.600

Hi all,

It's been a while but finally we can tell you all about what we have been working on. One of the bigger changes is the introduction of the Safety car and along with that, the race flags.

This forum post is to be used as a general guide to what you should expect to happen in races going forward.

There is different chances and conditions for each race flag coming out. Below is the general rules however there is a bit of variance in this too so it doesn't become too predictable.

The chances of each flag are:

Yellow for fuel running out car (running slow) on track or a retirement (30% Chance)

All car stopping retirements have the possibility of showing these flags
DBL yellow - 30% chance
VSC (Virtual safety car) - 25% chance
Safety Car - 15% chance

The length of each flag is also random however there is a general minimum and maximum length. 
Yellow flag - between 10 and 20 seconds
DBL yellow - between 20 and 60 seconds
VSC - between 40 and 160 seconds
Safety car - Minimum of 2 laps, but potentially up to 6 laps

The above timings are if you are doing a 100% length race, at 1x multiplier speed.
If you are doing a race at a different speed or scaling the above values change accordingly, for example a race run at 2x would be half the time. If you are running a race at 25% these would be 25% the time above. 

When the Safety car does come out, the car will sit at the end on the pit exit and await the lead car. 
When the Safety car picks up the lead car, the cars behind will start to bunch up and all follow the Safety car round. 
During this time the Safety car will have lights flashing on top.
A lap before the Safety car comes in the lapped cars will start to make their way through and finally overtake the Safety car and attempt to reach the back of the main train of cars.
When the call for the Safety car to come in as the cars go over the start finish line, the light on the Safety car will go out.
As the Safety car nears just over half way the Safety car will pick up speed and the lead car now controls the train of cars.
Once the Safety car reaches the pits and stops, the flag will go green and all cars will be allowed to overtake and push regardless of where they are on the track.

If you have any questions regarding this please list them below. If however you see any issues during races regarding safety cars and race flags, please put a separate thread in another sub forum.

Please enjoy, we hope it gives your races some more strategy.

How will tyre wear, fuel consumption, and fatigue be affected?

This was a bad move...
Now, more than ever, the race will we at the mercy of luck.
Last lap, right before drs zone, a latecomer breaks in front of p1, yellow flag pops and you can't overtake with drs. Sounds right? I don't think so.

Good update, it could be fun.
However i hope we won’t see "Renault-gate" with managers letting their second driver out of fuel to have a SC and win the race.

Yes, it does not matter, in races, stuff happens that you don't expect. This is adding more realism to the simulation

Hey! When you say 2x will be half the time, does that count for the laps of the safety car too? As in 2, to potentially 3 laps? Or is that unaffected?

Hi Darren :-)

A very good step towards a more realistic sim, in my personal opinion.

I would personally have the Safety Car chance varying from track to track, based on their run off areas, and real life probabilities (partly based on past historic F1 data)

For example, in China and Bahrain (where it is very easy to get lost in the sheer amount of run of areas) the chance should be lower (to approx. 8%, lower band at 100% distance) than Singapore and Canada, where due to the close proximity of the barriers, the probability over a 100% race, should be higher (perhaps around 40%, upper band at 100% distance)

And will current pitlane durations and pit lane speed limits, be corrected in light of the Safety Car being introduced? 

Tracks especially with current pitlanes 17.0s or under, may see races with 6-7 stops again, in light of the new race strategies to factor in the Safety Car (Valencia, Europe being a prime example with a 13.5s pitlane currently, as well as Monaco, which is already a 4-5 stop race at 100% distance, with the current pitlane speed limit of 72 kph)

Current iGP pitlane speed limits vs 2019 F1 pitlane speed limits (all in kph)
                         iGP Manager*            2019 F1
Australia:                109                          80
Malaysia:                109                          80
China:                     109                         80
Bahrain:                  109                         80
Azerbaijan***:       110                          80
Spain:                     109                          80
Monaco:                  72                           60
Turkey****:            109                          80**
Canada:                 106                          80
France:                                                  60
Austria:                                                 80
Great Britain 19:                                    60
Great Britain 09: 
Germany:                                              80 (Hockenheim)
Hungary:                                              80
Europe:                109                         80**
Belgium:                                              80
Italy:                                                   80
Singapore:                                           60
Russia:                                                 60
Japan:                                                  80
Mexico:                                                 80
United States:                                        80
Brazil:                  109                         80
Abu Dhabi:                                            80

*Average pit lane speed limit stated
**Corrected, based on 2019 f1 regulations
***Pit lane exit line in Azerbaijan is incorrect, should be just before the left turn exit, not just before when it meets the track
****Pit lane entry line in Turkey is incorrect, should be moved forward 300m

Hi, I'm not here to criticize but only to express my simple and useless opinion.
In competitive leagues, there are often boring races with endless queues for laps and laps, often the races are decided by qualifying, a fairly random element of the game. Sometimes someone manages to get the better with particular strategies that manage to free him from that infinite queue. The update therefore foresees to punish those few managers who make a magnificent race, putting random events that would bring him back in the queue? Also disabling DRS and boost for a few seconds, disabling overtaking and making the race actually a rainy race? Who loves rain races in this game? I think only those who start first, randomness rewards.
I am of the opinion that random events should be avoided so as not to spoil the gaming experience and whip the player, but instead it is what you thought you would do.
The story of "in the world of real f1 works like this" is not a convincing excuse in my opinion, especially to give victory to those who perhaps did not deserve it.
You could have spent that time fixing the qualifications, an already frustrating element of the game, giving more efficiency to the driver's mental and physical statistics or to the car statistics, and instead I see an update that increases the randomness of the game. Honestly, I have been playing for almost three years, but I was extremely disappointed with this update, but I hope you don't take offense for my pointless opinion.
I hope people don't give up in frustration...
I take advantage of the attention to ask instead for a fix for the filters of the league search 😉.

I don't think it's a good idea to explain every update you do with this kind of question...why? There are a lot of differences between a motorsport race and your game. If you want to make a mix, it should be balanced. I'll show an example.

Let's consider the yellow flag. If a manager runs out of fuel during the last lap, yellow flag will be shown and no possibility to use boost. So, you risk to finish the race with maybe 15% of boost, that's not good. You could say "think about it and use it before" and that's the point. Lots of manager use boost at the end not because it's funny, not because they want to do fast lap but because the optimal result is obtained in this way, due to how this game is coded. Take the Spain. The DRS is very powerfull, why should I use boost before the last lap if, using DRS, other managers will close the gap? -> I won't use it, I don't want to lose 20 positions at the end-> I will use it during the last lap -> My possibility to use all the boost depends on when other managers run out of fuel...really?
To be precise, lots of managers finish the race with 0.0L, it's a good strategy in your game and I ask you, is finishing the fuel before finish line a motorsport strategy? No,It's not and this is why in your game and only in your game it could be a mess, also because there is very often no advantage in using boost before the last lap.

What I want to say is that your game is clearly done to reward people that use less boost before the last lap and this update could give them a final position worse than what they deserve only because maybe a person intentionally runs out of fuel to freeze the positions 2 corners before the finish line.. You are trying to change the way to play the game but in my opinion you only increase the ways to spite other managers and you probably introduce strategies that are not part of the motorsport ones (intentionally run out of fuel).

I agree 😉

A few questions. 

When a player can’t make the race but has set the car up What happens when a yellow flag or safety car occurs Does the car still follow the strategy set? 

Can you pit under the safety car? 

for today's 3 races received a lot of negative emotions (((you can not see the results of the time, weather changes and when the driver goes to the pit stop

I think yellow flag should be revised. Yellow flag is shown when a car enters pitlane with 0 fuel, i think it should be shown when the car completely stops in the middle of the track and not when the fuel reaches 0. 
This was a little troublesome today in canada, where the last sector is also drs sector. I pitted a couple of laps before other drivers and I couldn't use drs for this reason, giving a huge advantage to the driver entering pitlane.

I've spectated some races and watched this at many laps.


I failed to see the rest of the flags & SC/VSC, but that's right because they should not appear too frequently.

After spectating 4 races, I Played a Quick Race with some friends to check the changes, but nothing happened even when a car stopped in the pit entrance. Is this update deactivated in Quick Races?

And one more thing. After doing all these things I spectated another race but this time the interface was the previous one with some changes, so I don't know if you can only attend to a number of races per day with the new interface or is it a bug.

I kinda like the update, but I think we need more feedback to ensure this works, and I am looking forward for our next race at Sunday.

I join the analysis made by Joao and Gaetano. As conceived, the SC only risks freezing the races in the final laps. I hope there will be changes in this regard. The league administrator could be allowed to turn the SC on or off. This game suffers from random qualifications, random starts, random pitstops, all this penalizes the linearity of the race. If you add another random, the game will no longer be a strategy game, but a game of luck, which will not appeal to managers with much experience and even new managers.

I wanted to compliment you anyway for the updates and especially for the very well-kept graphics.

I join the analysis made by Joao, Gaetano and Dome Nico 😉

In my opinion the best way would be to decrease the random effect to reward the best. Here you do the exact opposite, this game is becoming lonely and exclusively random. Not even the use of kers makes a difference anymore, since it takes an absent manager who runs out of gas to screw everything up.