Unresolved

Qualifying Nightmare

This is the odd behaviour that you clearly can see in Brazilian iGP (because the DRS bug still happens there).


Finish line "A" is the correct one, so when it's lap three all cars have to do another lap in order to get DRS. Although I think some cars have the Finish line "B", so when they start lap three, they are already able to get DRS.

I've always though about Fuel Economy affecting qualifying lap, that's why I have my own strategy of spending points there.
Every tenths you can get in a competitive League can mean better starting positions.

I've only done a few races after the update, I can say that tonight (16/10) in two of my teams I got quite a distance (+10 cars) between my drivers (heavier always behind).
Did you change that too?  [Driver weight affecting performance]

Alessandro, as far as I know, driver weight affecting on car pace is currently under development, that means you can have a 90kg driver at the moment without any loss.

About fuel load, as Jack said:

Therefore, we can try to spend points in Fuel Economy in order to try to use a litre less during practice (I'm assuming that if we need 8.1L to do three laps, iGP will put 9L).

Adam.

Whilst I agree with you that we should qualify on stint 1 fuel loads (I have suggested this before) to make it work properly the pit stop times have to become proportional to the amount of fuel taken on board. If someone runs a very light car on SS tyres which puts them at the front of the grid, they will have a very fast car in stint 1 and possibly a big lead after a few laps. It makes sense that they then need to be penalised by a longer pit stop to take on more fuel.

Getting the balance right wouldn't be an easy task.

Also, before very long the top managers would work out the optimum strategy. Everyone will copy it and we will be back here again. Assume the optimum strategy for a circuit is 9 laps SS for stint 1, that's what many mangers will do, then how do you differentiate between the cars for qualifying?

It's a tricky old problem.

Exit order ?

I think you misunderstood what the developers made random. They made qualifying running lap order random, so when practice is locked and your cars go to track they can go at any order (before or after everyone else).

By doing that they just wanted to confirm there isn't any track rubbering behaviour going on.

If the majority of managers are unhappy with random qualifying, we need the devs to introduce a method to differentiate between the various cars/drivers when it comes to determining grid positions.

Maybe driver attributes are a factor but unless there are hidden attributes it is simply going to be a case of hiring a talent 20 driver and then training them to 20 across the board. Once this has happened we are once again just rolling the dice.

If it's fuel load and tyres, before very long the best managers will have worked out the optimum strategy, other managers will copy this strategy so the majority of cars will qualify on the same tyre compounds and fuel load and... yep, roll the dice again.

So how can we have a qualifying system that rewards better management, because at the end of the day we're all playing a motorsport management game here?

IMO qualifying performance has to be related to something over which the manager has control but can't be seen (and therefore copied) by his/her competitors.

Two things immediately spring to mind and they are linked. Design balance and suppliers. In order to make design balance more influential we need to dramatically reduce the number of dp available to prevent all cars beginning the season with the same design and most teams maxing out design half way through the season. So it surprises me that so many managers believe the current system isn't broken and doesn't need changing... See here

If we reduced design then it also makes those extra few dp from suppliers more important and gives managers the opportunity to tweak the balance from race to race by selecting different suppliers.

By limiting the dp available we give managers a way to directly influence their qualifying and race pace in a way that can't be copied by other managers. The downside... How long before some managers find the magic balance and everyone accuses them of cheating?

One final point, it would also be a good time for the devs to make the cooling and reliability attributes more influential on race pace.

Apologies for me keep banging on about the same thing but I don't see any other relatively simple way of solving this problem.