Anyone knows how to get profit in my own team?

[bosco8179]

I always get red!

[Tig_green]

From sponsors, from paydrivers, spend less.

With CYOT you will get the whole year funds at once. When you pick existing team you get some each race. There is no actual difference in the total funds available by the chairman in the end (though finances may vary) but you just need to plan your spending more carefully in CYOT.

[BinaryDigit09]

My custom team is in its 6th season. Last year I took 4th in the ERS championship, and this year with two races to go I'm solidly in 1st place by 22 points. My drivers are 1-star and 3-star rated. I earn $1.6 million per race, even without meeting any sponsor target objectives, and I have about $65 million in cash (saving up for the Road Car Factory + prereq upgrades). Here's how I did it, although there might be other/better ways:

Basically, Marketability is king. Overall Marketability is the average of your two drivers' Marketability and your Team Marketability. Team Marketability goes up over time as you run races. Driver Marketability is pretty much the most important stat I consider. I don't care how good or promising a driver is, if their marketability is low then they're crap to me. Conversely, I don't care how crappy a driver is, if their marketability is high then I tag them as a favorite. For 5-star sponsorship eligibility, you need 90% overall marketability, which means 100% for the Team and at least 85% for each driver. (100 + 85 + 85 = 270, 270 / 3 = 90)

Since Team Marketability starts at 0%, it's very helpful to make that up with drivers. The first thing I did was fire everyone on the team (including designer & mechs) and hire Bao Tang ($132k) and Frankie Kinney ($77k) as drivers. They're both pay drivers with good marketability, so they'll pay their own salaries + extra and they'll bring in better sponsor offers. Everyone else on the team was a stock drone on a rolling contract for $1k/race. (In year 2 I hired mechs Tom Woodbridge and Mauricio Kurtz for their Nurse perk.) IIRC I started seeing 3-star offers pretty much right away. I also beelined the Scouting Center to max from the very beginning. NO other HQ upgrades AT ALL. I had a maxed out Scouting Center before I even considered upgrading the Factory to level 2. I constantly scouted every driver in ERS or unemployed (don't bother scouting others yet, they won't sign with you anyway), and painstakingly checked each one for >= 85% marketability and tagged them as favorites if so. New, young drivers appear during the Preseason. You MUST get them scouted ASAP.


By the end of my 2nd season or so my Team Marketability had caught up with my drivers and I was easily 4-star overall. At that point I started building the Heliopad and then replaced both drivers with >= 85% ones I had found during my scouting. Over the next 2-3 seasons I kept my ear to the ground and eventually nailed two "perfect" drivers. Their marketability is 89% and 95%. Their ages are 24 and 25. They're both Pay Drivers. And they're both crappy or not great, so they're cheap. And even though they're not good drivers, I'm still winning races because my car has gotten pretty good.

The non-target sponsor deals (the three on the right-hand side) are the most important for financial stability and sustainability. If you don't get offered one of the best deals you can get in one of those slots, go empty for 2-3 races until the crappy offer expires. Hold out for the best possible sponsor deals in those three slots. I maintain three 5-star deals giving me $700k, $800k, and $1.2m no matter how poorly I do on race day. Once in a while some lowly 3 or 4-star sponsor tries to take a chance on me, but nope, they sit and rot.

For each part, I make one Average and two Good. For the Average one, I pick the highest possible performance while staying within the rules so I can use it during the current season. For the two Good parts, I pick the highest possible performance without regard to legal/illegal components, and they generally stay on the shelf until next year. Sometimes one of the Good parts is still legal (depending on available components), in which case I'll aim to use it during the current season as well. I think this gives a good balance between upgrading for the current season vs. min/maxing performance for the future with illegal components.

A word of warning though: This "crappy driver great car" strategy won't work when you advance to Asia. There you need pretty good drivers to compensate for your new bottom-of-the-barrel car. So my plan is to remain in the ERS (dominating and making bank, of course) until all three money-making HQ buildings are up and running. Then I'll shop around for a couple of decent high-marketability drivers without having to care if they're Pay Drivers or not.

[Rakesh]

Interesting read and here in my 4th season, I'm going almost bankrupt trying to hold on to my 31/2 star, low marketability drivers!
I've had it wrong all along :(

[Inardesco]

It's quite easy to get like 200mill in the bank

[WhiskeyMatt]

I'd still recommend advancing to Asia, even if you don't want to stay there, as Paydriver perk payout is tied to series level (you will get more as you progress), while payments for last place in Asia should be as good or better than anything you can get in ERS.