Written by Rhys James with contributions by: Connor Cooper, Antonio Ascari, JNS NTFR, Cameron Pollock, Leo Hackins, Gustavo Heiden, Mihai TMD, Juanito Jones and others from the iGP Community discord server.
One of the main reasons for frustration in iGP is misconceptions popularised among tutorials, new players or even more experienced ones, are holding you back. So, in an effort to educate iGP's newer players I have written this guide with input from the great players (and people) mentioned above.
Of course, if you have any questions ask below :)
Part... 0? or Disclaimer:
As always, we try to keep this guide up to date. However, it may not be possible due to the secretism of high level play or just plain uncertainty directly after updates.
Therefore, here is a quick guide as to how certain we can be of the guide's advice...
+ Strategy, car development and in-race techniques
- Driver Balance
...the date of the guide's last update...
13/04/2023
..and the gameplay's last update:
12/04/2023
1A: Driver Attributes
Well, this is awkward. First chapter of a guide and I'm saying we don't know the balance of our own drivers? Yep, but we do know roughly what is best.
For best performance in high level elite leagues, driver training should look like this:
1- Train Physical until BMI is green (and stamina is 30)
2- Train Driving ability stats to ≈20
3- Train mental stats to ≈15
4- Finish maxing Driving ability stats and then mental stats
For lower level leagues, or lower tiers with commonly changing drivers, Stamina becomes less important and Driving ability/mental stats can be prioritised.
1B: Mental stats
Mental stats are the area of driver ability least understood by competitive players. The reasons why are nuanced, but suffice to say it is because we never needed to investigate them.
One common misconception is that they decide car setup. Ride height is wholly determined by driver height (the taller the driver, the lower the ride height), and Wing Level is by a driver's driving ability stats (the better they are, the lower the wings that are needed).
Some mental stats' descriptions state they control setup, but this is incorrect.
Above: A T20 example Driver mid-training for a competitive league.
1C: Driver Abilities
There are 4 Driver abilities:
Racecraft
- Improves your driver's ability to overtake and defend position. Incredibly useful in high level play when cars are close, and a grid with racecraft makes it an absolute necessity to compete. 10/10
Qualifying
- Improves your driver's pace in qualifying. Not particularly useful, unless no-one in your league uses racecraft, as any drivers with racecraft will just overtake on lap 1. 3/10
Street Circuits
- Improves your driver's performance on certain tracks. While highly powerful on the few tracks, it will provide no help on the majority, so isn't widely used. 4/10
Wet Weather
- Improves your driver's pace whenever the water level on track is >0. Incredibly useful in any wet race, giving huge chunks of time every lap. However, as it does nothing in dry races, racecraft is still comfortably better. 7/10
2A: Car Development Basics
Car performance is determined by Design Points (DP), which can be spent in 8 areas:
Acceleration
Braking
Cooling
Downforce
Fuel Economy (FE)
Handling
Reliability
Tyre Economy (TE)
They are generated by your Design HQ and gained via research. The balance of these changes with level: Your design HQ becomes more powerful as you level it up, and research loses power the higher level you are.
At lower levels, with minimal DP generation from HQ and large research power, choosing what to prioritize is very dependent on those around you.
In common parlance, there are 3 'Categories' of stats:
The 'Big 4'
-Acceleration
-Handling
-Braking
-Downforce
These stats impact a car's pace and which is most important varies by track.
Of these, Acceleration and Handling provide the biggest gains at the majority of tracks and should be your top priorities for development.
The 'Economy' stats:
Fuel Economy (FE)
Tyre Economy (TE)
These are special. They control how quickly fuel is used and tyres wear. The higher their value, the more these are slowed. The unique thing about the economy stats is that DP spent at lower levels has a much greater effect than at higher levels. They are not often worth developing past 20 or 30 in leagues with refueling, but in NRF (No refueling) leagues, they are more important- FE especially can provide a large benefit by allowing you to load less fuel (and weight) for the duration of the race.
The Useless stats:
Cooling and Reliability are never worth putting DP into or researching, as they provide no benefit to car pace.
Because of this, you should try to have a CD (chief designer) with a weakness in one of the useless stats, or TE, and a strength in one of the 5 stats you will want to develop. CDs generate part of your next season's car each race so having a good one (with a good strength and weakness, and within 1 level of you) for every race you can is important.
2B: Research ('Spying')
Colour Code time!
Research is an area of design that occurs post-race based on a pre-race selection of what to research.
You receive Your research percentage worth of the gap between your car and the top car in that design attribute.
(E.G 60% of (85-50)= 60% of 35 = 21 DP gain in the chosen attribute)
It is a very different area of car design to others as it completely depends on other's development choices.
Your maximum research percentage is approximately 100-(3*Level)%.
This is reduced if your CD and TD are below your team level and is equally split between the areas you choose to research (as indicated by the checkbox being red or green)
You should not research an area if the checkbox is red when active- this denotes you already have the best car and so you cannot make any gains from research, as the gap between you and the top car is 0.
Research should be in what delivers the largest gains.
For example, while there is no point researching for one DP in Acceleration if you could get 20 in braking, there is equally no point getting 16 in Tyre economy rather than 15 in Handling.
Some of research's mechanics are lesser known.
Some relevant are that you gain a 10% research boost researching CD strength, a 50% reduction researching weakness and that each DP researched is rounded up (4.6 DP gain gives 5 DP).
2C: DNF's
DNF's will never randomly occur- they will instead happen if you let your car's health drop to 8%.
This will never happen if you repair your car as you should, even if you do not repair for a few races in a row.
If struggling for parts, remember that new engines provide a pace impact but parts do not, so as you get a new car for each season you can leave parts unrepaired for the last race of the season.
2D: Custom engines
...are available only to level 20+ managers, who aren't this guide's target. All you low level players need to know is that they can be significantly better than your standard engine supplier, but not without considerable time and/or tokens.
You can become a customer to a manager who accepts you; in this case, their engine will apply bonuses to your car in place of an engine supplier (E.G Murk, giving +10 Acc, -6 FE). You will pay them a fee they set every race. Make sure any engine you sign up to is better than what you could have got otherwise.
3: Push Management
Poor push management is the main reason that managers lack pace, and with sub-optimal strategies even popularised in tutorials it is easy to see why.
There is no one 'optimal' method, but most top players agree on these 3 points:
1- Push more in corners and less on straights
2- Keep tyres around the top of the black
3- Push more on in-laps and when pace is needed, and less when sat in a train
This is because pushing in straights overheats tyres quickly, and pushing in corners allows more efficient pushing.
Overheated tyres lose performance and suffer from increased wear until cooled, Underheated tyres do not produce enough performance.
When secure in your knowledge of push, it can be useful to know that higher push levels consume more fuel, so cooler tracks will require more fuel to maximize pace.
If ever short of fuel, keep tyres a little cooler to save the fuel from push.
4: Finding a league
Pick how many cars you want. If you are on the mobile app, one car racing is significantly easier and managing two will put you at a disadvantage, since you have to manually switch between cars. On tablet or PC this isn't a concern and either can be raced on a level playing field.
Find a time and race schedule that suits you. It seems silly to say, but if you can't race live you won't perform anywhere near as well as if you do: finding a league you can race in is hugely important to your enjoyment and success.
A good league should be:
Active- more important in higher tiers as a truly active rookie is extraordinarily rare even for top leagues.
Close to full- over 60% full ideally.
Competitive- Whether this is a top manager to fight or many around your level, make sure you have people to race.
Helpful- the best leagues assist new players and offer advice in race.
Make (or invite) friends! iGP is infinitely more fun if you have friends (or rivals!) playing it. Get to know people, join discord servers and the like. The more you know people the more tips+tricks will be passed on to you from the community.
Some leagues form a network (Examples include Formula Zero and the Global Cup Series) of shared managers, hosts and communities. If you are new to the game these may be a good place to start as more managers will be able to help, but active and helpful individual leagues are also an incredibly valuable learning resource.
If possible, join early in the season. There is no point joining a league with 3 races to go just to be relegated (unless you are a rookie, since you can't be) so ask the host if you can join when the new season starts, or do it when there is a vacancy early on.
It's likely the game placed you in a league to begin with. You may like this, you may not. But if you don't enjoy or can't race live, make sure to find somewhere you will/can. It's simple to leave a league and just costs a small 1% fee. If it says you will be relegated don't worry, it won't actually relegate you.
5: Sponsors
"Sponsors aren't important" is a common misconception- and as it does not affect race pace, an understandable one.
First, secondary sponsor. If you regularly achieve your race goal, this is practically a choice on looks. If you don't, one with higher guaranteed income (usually WTF1) is preferable.
The primary sponsor, on the other hand, should always be iRacing. Not only does it provide the maximum 3 tokens/race (primary sponsor is your only free token source), but it has the highest bonus income (collected by achieving race goal) of any 3 token sponsor.
6: Headquarters
One of my favourite ways to describe HQ importance comes from super mod and long time player Kevin Bissell. To build on his medieval battlefield analogy…
The Design HQ is the fast horse- you can't be at the fight without it- Crucial at higher levels as your research decreases.
The Manufacturing HQ is the cook, providing food everyone else has it, so having an excess supply (of parts) won't do you any good, but not having enough will harm you. Because of this, developing it early will help throughout your development, but it should not be needed above level 20.
The Simulator is your training camp- important when it provides your soldiers... but you could just hire them pre-trained.
The Technology center is the sword and shield to fight at the front- also crucial, especially in Elite and Pro.
Since the purpose of the offices and youth academy (known as the YDA) is to produce new staff and drivers for your team (at high immediate cost in tokens but very low long term cost) they are only necessary at high levels, as a long term investment. This means you can ignore them until the other facilities are maxed or you can hold maxed drivers and staff.
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From this point down the guide is still in Q4 2022 spec (oops?). However, it is still 99% applicable to the current balance of gameplay
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7A: Race management
In races with refueling, never (without exceptional circumstances) fuel above 45-50 litres, think twice before deciding to fuel above 40.
Strategies of course vary by track, but often a combination of softs and mediums will be best.
Intermediates are for use between 0.1 and 3.3mm of water, wets for 3.1 to 5. Your advanced strategy will automatically qualify you on intermediates even if you have wets selected as stint one of you leave it as 'Use intermediates above 0mm', so be wary of that.
Tyre wear decreases the more worn the tyres are, but is no longer fully logarithmic as it was from 2011-2022. If you don't want a calculator, pretend wear is flat and plan to wear tyres down to 40%.
Worn tyres will be slower and require more push to heat up.
7B: Pit Stops
Pit stops in iGP manager have a base time of 3 seconds exactly to switch tyre, plus extra time for every litre added over about 21. In theory, there should not be random elements.
The game fuels your car not to add the litres specified, but to the exact amount of the litres specified. For example, entering the pits with 1.5 litres and setting 25 litres will fuel you up to 25 litres and not to 26.5.
Fuel usage is consistent if you do not change how you push.
8: Pre-race
Practice times include a multitude of factors such as driver mistakes, opponents testing different setups, different weather conditions and more. In qualifying where driver mistakes are turned off you can see the true one lap pace of your car. Practice, consequently, is to find the ideal setup, tyre and fuel data for your car(s). Unless you have an ideal setup (bought or rewarded from daily rewards) you will need to use a process of trial+improvement to find them, before ideally Storing them in your notes (fortunately, there is a note set accessible by your user menu in the top right of the top bar)...
...or you could steal it from the table of dry setups above. For rain, both stats increase by the same amount (dependent on the strength of rain)
This table is for drivers with 20 in all stats as was the maximum until 30/01/2023. Further upgraded drivers will require lower wing levels than displayed (as in 1B) and of course weaker drivers need higher wings.
Fueling your car is a calculation you should do by yourself, not relying on the auto calculation of the game. The reason for this is iGP adds extra 'safety' fuel which will just slow you down with no benefits. Your calculation will roughly be (Fuel per Lap) * (Laps) while also taking into account push level (higher push uses more fuel) and a little extra for driving in the pits.
Many players either use a spreadsheet to automate calculations for out tyre wear and fuel, or use tables and calculators to do it when needed.
The best strategy is often to go one lap longer than your opponents. This is called the (one lap) overcut and works because your car, on low fuel, can outpace their heavy cars over one lap- and then will have fresher tyres for the next stint as well. However, if you notice your league is running exceptionally long opening stints (eg 14-15-8 or the like) an undercut (12-14-11 for example) to waste their boost or drive into the distance can work too. Sometimes you might want to play it safe and aim for the same stints as them to try and beat them on track. This can work well if it is a track with risks of DRS splits as it should allow you to stay with them. None of this is a magic bullet or replacement for experience though, as it all changes based on temperature and league.
A good strategy to go for if you are completely unsure is a softs 4 stop, minus one pit for each 25% race distance below 100%
9: Other useful things to look at:
Up-to-date Guides (as of Q4 2022):
https://igpmanager.com/forum-thread/45546 (The mechanics of chassis Development)
https://igpmanager.com/forum-thread/42023 (Advanced Strategy in a nutshell)
It is advisable you build up your knowledge in some way such as a spreadsheet or document, many mangers use them and some even include calculatiors to automate the more menial tasks of race setup such as calculating fuel or tyre wear.
Add-on chapters:
10A: Money Management
Finally, Money Management is an aspect of the game many managers struggle with and there is no easy (free) way around it if you are to keep developing your account.
The main crunch point comes in the early teen levels (13-17) where, as you reach elite and earn XP much faster, you level up and are likely to fall behind on HQ upgrades. It may be tempting to token your way through it but wait, gain experience and patiently upgrade your HQ. Sit at the back of the pack and *respectfully* try to stay in elite as you upgrade Technology and Design. (don't try to race people clearly faster than you, it will just irritate them and possibly cause them to return the favour)
If you do fall out of the black though, don't worry too much. All it means is you cannot upgrade your HQ and manufacturing output will be halved (not a problem if you have had it at a good level for a while and have a parts reserve). If needed you can always trade tokens for money to bail yourself out but it will eventually resolve itself as your results improve and as sponsor income Increases with level.
10B: Doctors and money saving tips
One quick way to save money is to let your doctor's contract run out and get an auto-generated £50k/race one. Since this only has an impact on driver training by increasing health used per train as below:
10 Per session for a 5* doctor
11 per session for a 4 or 4.5* doctor
12 for a 3 or 3.5 star
13 for a 2 or 2.5 star
14 for a 1 or 1.5 star and
15 for a half star doctor
You can easily get away with this if your driver is trained or even just high enough level that they aren't training quickly any more.
Another easy way to save money if in real trouble is to race in a 1 car league as opposed to a 2 car league. This will allow you to sell your second driver and save on wages. It will also reduce parts usage allowing you to save more tokens for money and wages.
Finally, never buy ideal setup unless incredibly time pressured. Instead use the table provided above or your own database to save 3 tokens a race easily.
We hope the is guide helps you and once again, for any questions you still have, just ask below.
GLOSSARY:
CD = Chief Designer, affecting research power and next season's car.
TD = Technical Director, affecting research power.
DR = Doctor, affecting health lost during driver training.
Big Four = Acceleration, Handling, Braking and Downforce. These stats impact your car's raw speed.
PL (1-5) = Push level, which affects car speed, tyre temp and tyre wear.
YDA = Young Driver academy. Though technically called the youth academy, this HQ building is commonly refered to as the YDA.
DP/EP = Design/Engine Points, used to upgrade your car.
(e.g) Acc/Cool = The common method of expressing a CD's strength/weakness.
Acc = Acceleration
Bra = Braking
Cool = Cooling
Dow/Dwf = Downforce
FE = Fuel Economy
Han = Handling
Rel = Reliability
TE = Tyre economy
