The mechanics in this game are great but complex and aren’t that clear when picking this up for the first time – so all of the questions/struggles you raise are valid ones and not obvious on initial playthroughs.
Contents
Guide to Basics
All credit goes to domharrison69!
Point 1 – Racing Series
The European Racing Series is effectively division 3 of the availible divisions in the open wheel world. When you place first in this division you are afforded the opportunity to promote in to division 3 (not a realistic representation of real life, but it adds to the game play). If the 1st placed team do chose to promote, the bottom team in the second division is relegated. Naturally, relegated teams tend to be stronger than teams in division 3.
Point 2 – Part Development
It probably comes as no suprise to you, the best way to finish higher in races is to have a better car relative to everyone else. This means you need to advance your car quicker than the competition is, as you start with the worst car on the grid. From reading your explanation above, its the most key change you need to make as the principle game consideration is to find a way to quickly improve your car. The best way to do this is:
Develop Car Parts to the Maximum Possible Value
Designers known components are far more important than any of their stats. Pick a lead designer that has ‘known components’ at average, good & great level, eg. apicella or o’sullivan. This means you can build each part based upon your designer knowledge and effectively build beyond the contraints of your HQ capabilities – filling the each part up to slot 5.
The great tip is once you have all current parts developed to ‘great’ level (slot 3) you can then hire a new lead designer with the ‘adds random legendary component’ at the epic level; filling 4 component slots per part, even though your HQ only allows you to develop up to slot 2.
Hasimoto or Spier are you best ‘random legendary component’ dudes. Spier being optimal, but you can’t always get him in season 1.
The ‘random legendary component’ can result in you adding an additional 100+ performance points to each part, and really helps you catch up to other teams!! The extra part at no additional cost can also be powerful too.
Because of this, I don’t invest in the HQ in season 1. Instead i spend cash on developing 16-20 car parts.
Pick Components That Carry Over to the Next Season
Your best two parts carry over each year to the next season. Be mindful numeric additions to performance do carry over to next season and they have an impact on ‘car stats’ (i.e. where your car is positioned relative to others) and also influence where your car is forecast to finish in the next race.
However, items such as ‘+50 on dry tyres’ or ‘tyre wear improved’ do help in the current season but do not carry over to the next. Equally they don’t reflect in the position finishing predicter. I tend to avoid these components, unless I think I am going to get promoted that season – when you promote your current car is mothballed and you are presented with a new ‘worst car’ relative to your new division.
Risky parts do carry over to the next season, but their risk values do not. One strategy can be to develop the most risky parts you can, but use them sparingly; priorising next years car over this years.
Part Priority
Engine and gearbox have more impact that other parts. Prioritise deveoping these over the others.
Point 3 – Finances
To be able to develop parts properly you need to have good cashflow and there are two good ways of generating cash – pay drivers and good marketability. Marketability is calculated by averaging driver 1, driver 2 and team marketabilty stat. The higher the marketability the more sponsor cash you get. If you can get pay drivers with good marketability at the start (personally i do sack all drivers when starting a career, but my focus isn’t on how good their driving stats are) then you can raise a boatload of cash and focus money on part design. Drivers i use regularly are F. Kinney, S. Price, M. Pires, N. Mellado, B. Tang – some you may need to wait a season to get, but the first two should be availble from the start. Team marketability is driven up by performing above your chairmen expecations – I personally set low expections when I have the worst team, particularly when my HQ is poor, and high expectations when I am expecting to be promoted. If your team marketability starts to fall due to poor performance it impacts your ability to attract good sponsors.
Always pick the cheap options when budgeting for next years car. Putting money aside for a rainy day doesn’t help you progress in this game. Any money you have leftover gets carried forward anyway.
Point 4 – Mechanics
Finally the impact of mechanic’s special traits can be overlooked. Depending on the rules at play, some traits are more effective than others. The fast refuling trait is really helpful when refuling is active, for example, and can lead to your pit stops being much quicker than the other teams.
The final area is race strategy, but your post seems more to be about off-race points so assume you are ok here. There are some cheeky bits you can do, if you are using the short race format of the game, by only pitting once on the 13 lap races which massively moves you up the field.
Hope this helps. Using this it’s possible to achieve promotion in season 2. If you pick the right investor at the start (the one that affords a 3 star chassis) you can get promoted in the first season.
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