Hi Molly.
Did you read my post 6 above this?
I have a L15 team which competed in a 17 race season. The following season was 19 races, by race 9 the big 4 were maxed and two races before the end of the season the car was at 800 dp and going into Abu Dhabi I had 26 unused design points.
I was in a very competitive well attended league and ended up second in the championship to a 10k rep manager who won his 5th consecutive title.
So nobody is ignoring the lower level teams, they're just as capable of maxing out design and winning races if the team is well managed.
I must be doing something wrong then, because I struggle to get maxed out, if I manage it at all, it's only by the last lap.
Maybe I research the wrong areas, I don't know but I always try to go for the one that will give me the most gain
But you say you have a level 15 team which reads as though you have a second team meaning that you get more experience, I guess
Hi Molly.
As a L15 Manager (the team is now L16) I only received 15 design points per race from my HQ. However, I had L15 CDs and TD so I got slightly higher research power than my L19 and L20 competitors.
To max out design requires a bit of planning and the unwitting assistance of other managers in the league LOL.
First of all it is helpful to begin the season with the highest possible design. At the time the previous season was 17 races so I would have used three or four CDs, all of them L15 and each with different strengths and the same weakness... reliability. The resulting total dp for Australia including supplier bonus dp was 350.
Then it's a case of hoping your competitors focus all of their design in one of the big 4. The league I was competing in at least one manager would throw everything at acceleration to the exclusion of everything else and another focussed on Braking. I kept my design artificially low in these areas to maximise research and used suppliers to boost the same attributes so that the car's competitiveness didn't suffer too badly.
You're not necessarily doing anything wrong. If you're in a league with managers who tend to produce a more balanced design by spreading their dp across all attributes instead of focussing on one area it reduces the effectiveness of your research and makes it much harder to maximise your own design.
I have three teams but only ever have one of them active. My other two teams are L20 and were migrated from the old game in August 2016.