Better car, any driver, worse performance?

[G0emi]

First of, I play without Mods right now and I'm now at around 55 game hours ... before anyone asks :p

Now to my question, is it normal, that the "worse" car performs better than the "developed" one?
I'm currently playing open single seated Formula-like races and got one "better" driver I give my "better" car to (with higher stat numbers) and after 3 races of him performing way worse than the other driver I changed cars.
Suddenly the better driver in the worse car got way faster than the worse driver with the now better car. What?
After 2 races I changed cars back to better driver with better car and ... well he got worse again.
Also, their setup % allways were around 97%, sometimes 96 sometimes 98, but never further apart than 2%.
Does this ... somehow ... makes any sense? Am I missing something? I mean, the parts of the cars are around the 400 range, so lets say the good car parts are between 420 and 440 each and the bad car 390~410.
And we are talking about 0,3~0,5 seconds per lap and as race result, like 3rd place to 14th place.
Help? xD

[Madkine]

What's the form stat on the drivers? Do either of the drivers have any temporary modifiers from random events?

[unoMaestro]

Is your better driver really better in anything? He can be less consistent or less focused - and that affects the results. Maybe your race engineer for better driver is actually worse?

[Chthonic Guardian]

I had this last season, where whoever I gave the better car to did worse than the #2 car driver. Both drivers were 4.5 stars and pretty equal.

[G0emi]

Thanks for the responses so far!
Welp, you make valid points, to be honest it seems there are a few factors a wasn't completely aware of such as race engineer and personal form.
It may be I was just, lets call it, unlucky that day and I jumped to conclusions but it is pretty annoying when you spend half a season to improve a single car because thats all you can afford, and whoever gets it seems performing worse xD
I've got to check again on the details but I can for now say for certain that the race engineers were pretty equal *bad*. Like the ones you get when you start a new team with stats in the 0-3 range for everything.

[unoMaestro]

Originally posted by G0emi:

I've got to check again on the details but I can for now say for certain that the race engineers were pretty equal *bad*. Like the ones you get when you start a new team with stats in the 0-3 range for everything.

In fact, good race engineer can be way better investment of your money than car development. For example, lightfooted soft tyres can allow you to use faster tyres in any situation instead of mediums, and in some cases even 1-stop the race which is huge advantage.

[Eagle_of_Fire]

The whole point of all this goes more around where you are and when you are. When you start a career or when you switch to another rank (from F3 to F2 for example) then you are always going to struggle being anything but last. The best stat for drivers is always smoothness tho because it allow you to spend more time racing instead of pitting. Which can help you take a trash car driven by an otherwise trash driver get half ranking or higher in a season.

So, in short... Way too many factors to give a real general answer here. You actually got a fair amount of pointers above already to help you out.

[morpheus]

Originally posted by unoMaestro:

In fact, good race engineer can be way better investment of your money than car development. For example, lightfooted soft tyres can allow you to use faster tyres in any situation instead of mediums, and in some cases even 1-stop the race which is huge advantage.

Dont forget the "-50% refuelling time"; with sequential pit stops(fuel after tires) this nets at least 12 secs per race in GT (with 40kg tanks).

[Drysyn]

always vote for a refueling ban! if a car catches fire it can ruin your good driver's career ;)

[morpheus]

cant remember ever having a fire tbh

[Madkine]

I think I've seen 3 in a 24 year career. Only one happening to my driver.

[Eagle_of_Fire]

I had one. I don't recall having anything bad resulting of it? For me it was simply a critical miss in the pits.

[Madkine]

The driver can suffer ongoing effects from it if it was bad enough.

[Drysyn]

yeah, there's a 50% chance that the driver will be traumatised for life by the fire, and i must be really unlucky i have had it happen a fair few times especially down in the lower single seater championships

[G0emi]

I saw it happen for one of the other teams a few weeks ago but I didn't care for any consequences other than me not being last in that race :P

[RustyWheel]

I find the car matters more than the driver. You can have the best driver on the grid but if your car is mediocre you will just be throwing away hundreds of thousands of dollars per race.

I look for drivers with 1 or 2 stars who have the potential to get to 4 stars that have good smoothness, overtake, consistency and no 1 or 0's, pay them peanuts and sign them to long contracts as reserve drivers usually at less then 100k per race. I've won the ERS season multiple times with drivers that I paid less than 250K combined to.

By time my most experienced driver reaches 4 stars and is ready to demand 600K plus a race my reserve driver is ready to move in. I'm like a farm system for the other teams.