Young driver academy

How does the young driver academy work? Do you have to hire drivers yourself or does it happen automatically?

you have to choose to hire or release.  you can keep a driver in there indefinitely

Do you hire drivers as normal then, like hiring a driver to drive for your team?

The YDA will generate new drivers each race. You can choose to leave them there to be trained or release them to the market so that you will have new drivers generated the next race.

The talent level of drivers varies so you will likely release the low ones and keep the high ones. Also you can choose to hire a driver from the YDA as one of your drivers.

Hi, I've bought the YDA one race ago, and afterwards, I checked the YDA page in the facilities section, but there were no drivers. All the slots were blank. Do you know why?

You have to select a country to scout, i.e. Italy, UK, China. Once you choose a country, your YDA will fill up with drivers after every race and then you can decide which to keep and train, and which to kick out. Those which you keep will gain "readiness" and after 20ish races, they are 100% race ready. You can hire them at any point though. When hiring them for a race seat, you select a wage to pay them and I believe they will accept any offer. There is no wait time before they accept, and there is no signing fee.

Do different countries have different weighting? As in better chance of finding talent 20 etc?

All countries give equal chance of finding high talent.

I think drivers in this game perform better at their home tracks, so british drivers will tend to do well at Silverstone, Belgian drivers at Spa etc. If there are any other differences between nationalities I would be surprised. 

Not so sure about that since it would mean drivers from nations without a race wouldn't have that advantage. What I do notice is that drivers seem to like certain tracks, no matter if it's a home track. But then again, they can like it for some seasons and do bad the season after. :D