It's been a while since I've raced on here. Life kinda got in the way for a bit, but I intend on returning. I'm not fully aware of all the changes that've been made in the last two or three years, so I apologize if this has already been reworked or is being looked into. I used to absolutely love this game, but I remember one detail about the game that seemed kinda weird to me. Leagues all seem to end up with drivers perfectly maxed out in every attribute, all with 20 talent, all built around the "meta"(If you want to call it that) of being light. I remember you definitely needed a 20 talent driver that was as light as possible, but aside from a couple attributes, drivers typically ended up all looking the same. The last time I played, you wanted all 20 driving attributes, 20 stamina, and people didn't train the mental attributes at all. Once you had drivers maxed out and people had developed their cars to their respective tier limits and had strategies worked out, it seemed like for the most part, the race felt out of your hands. I obviously don't know all the factors that go into the game, but it honestly felt totally random to me sometimes how things played out. You could set up two identical teams with two identical drivers and one team was just outright two or three tenths faster than the other.
If you're level 16, I understand training a driver beyond level 16 is an issue. I assumed it was this way to keep a level 2 team from ending up with a level 20 driver, which I always thought made sense. I mean why would Max Verstappen even consider driving for a backmarker Formula 2 team? I think he's past that point.
The thing I used to not understand, is even if you're Level 16, why can we not train a single attribute over that? As long as the driver's average level is still equal to or below 16. It could make driver attributes more important as instead of a league full of Level 20s all having guys trained to all 20 attributes and 20 talent. Leagues are full of Ayrton Sennas and Lewis Hamiltons with very little, from what I remember, differentiating factors between drivers. There aren't 32 perfect race car drivers in the world. They all have individual strengths and weaknesses and things they just accel at better than others. Either this could be an option or making it harder to max out all of a driver's attributes could while giving managers somewhat of a level of control over the driver.
A driver better in fast corners could perform better on tracks with more fast corners, a driver better in slow corners could perform well on tracks with more slow corners.
With how things are now, all attributes go up together. There's not much control aside from training driving, mental, and physical. Eventually, everything just hits level cap all together. You can't train a driver in specifically fast corners to help them prepare for a race at a track that has many fast corners. You can't train a driver in specifically slow corners to help them prepare for a race like Monaco. From what I remember from past experiences, drivers have no strengths or weaknesses when they're all at level 20 aside from their physical attributes like height and weight and if they go into a race tired or not.
The secondary part to this is having driver attributes being able to exceed a team's level cap by just a point or two(to prevent too many balancing issues), obviously meaning while they are really good at certain things, they'll have weaknesses elsewhere. It would add more character to individual drivers, give them kind of an on-track "personality" while meaning some tracks they would accel at and others they wouldn't. Maybe even somewhat of a level of randomness thrown in so the driver kinda develops this personality on their own to an extent instead of managers directly influencing how the driver develops.
I also saw someone mention about a month or so ago bringing back the old iGP systems where drivers got worse as they got older, and I think these two systems if put in place together could go well together. I feel it could simulate drivers battling through strengths and weaknesses and fighting against age while managers could find drivers they feel would best cover up a car's weaknesses or boost it's strengths.
I mention this because I feel it could add a layer of depth to the game. Kinda like how Madden was in the PS2 days, players had their own strengths and weaknesses and figuring out how you wanted to build a team around these strengths and weaknesses and figuring out which players worked where while you watched young players develop alongside a veteran before eventually being the team leader was always the best part of the PS2 Madden Franchise experience, at least in my opinion. That layer of depth made it feel like teams had a personality or an identity. You knew going into a game what you were going to be dealing with, you knew you had to put some kind of double coverage on Randy Moss, you knew running the ball against the Steelers was a waste of time. You had to gameplan around these strengths and weaknesses to be successful.
I love ideas I've seen leagues use like limiting R&D or ideas people have posted like a system that limits how many design points you can use over a certain period so you can develop a car how you want basically with it's own strengths and weaknesses, so why not be able to do the same with drivers?
