Okay, so here's what I'm working on. It's not a huge sweeping change, but a refinement of the current system which can be further refined in future if need be.
1) The research conducted at each race will be more clearly explained and displayed up front on the Cars page, right alongside design points.
2) A new Research Dialog is added to the cars page, showing the performance level of your team vs the best teams in the league.
3) After each race, instead of comparing your total number of design points with the team that has the most overall (as it currently works), the research will look at each individual area where any team is stronger than your team, and earn a portion of the difference in that particular area.
4) The "Research" HQ will probably be renamed to "Technology" HQ, to avoid confusion between the two features
These screenshots below show a Work In Progress implementation of this I am building locally for testing. When I say we can add further refinements to this system in future, the first thing I can think would be to limit the gains to specific areas, and allow teams to focus on what those areas might be. But for an initial implementation, it would be entirely automated, as with the current system.
Cars page (Work In Progress):
Research dialog (Work In Progress):