Am I the only one that thinks this?

Over all the races I've done in iGP, something has begun to stand out. That is that certain tracks appear to be 'favoured' tracks for our teams (regardless of which drivers we have). I always seem to go well at Japan, and I race against someone that always goes well at Singapore. The flip side is also true, there are tracks that my team always does poorly at (same level car, similar drivers, same fuel, tyres and push levels), no matter what I try.

It makes me think that each and every team has some sort of random seed to them, something that's supposed to make them better/worse at certain tracks (in an effort to spice the racing up and make it so the same people don't always win?)

So has anyone else noticed this? That they are always good/bad at certain tracks?

I can confirm what Matts says, i have several good tracks year in year out and serveral bad ones and it doesnt matter what drivers i have. Ive won all 11 Singapore races with about 4 or 5 different drivers and its similar with other tracks, same also that i never go well round Germany my qualifying is always worse than my average, season after season.
Everytime Japan is coming around we go well another domination of Japan by Matt hehe, and it happens. it cant be put down to drivers cus weve had many in our time racing.

While I firmly believe there is a certain randomization going on (which I support fully).  I also wonder sometimes if it's setup based.  I imagine most guys import the setup from the previous seasons (or seasons) and use that.  So I wonder if we end up in a perpetual crappy car loop where some tracks you have happened to hit a good setup while at others you haven't, and that continues on forever.

Sometimes your car basic design is best for specific tracks, I woudn't be surprised if there are hidden attributes which we can't see that put this into effect. Suffice to say in Beta, those attributes we are shown in the image, will definately play a huge part on what tracks we perform well in.

Funny you bring this up Matt. I was going to start a "speculation" thread earlier in the week but I lost track of time and then couldn't be bothered.

Some of the theories I was going to put up were..

1. Drivers are faster with a "medium" balance of Mental and Technical training (see my driver Mansell for example).
   
2. Teams have their  fast tracks and slow tracks. My teams fast track has always been Spain, and usually slow at Germany. I've noticed there are certain tracks where I can almost guarantee my team will get pole position and certain tracks where I know, regardless of design (even if I'm a higher %), that my team will qualify very poorly. I've also noticed sometimes that certain qualifying results seem to favour everyones second driver where the grid looks almost completely reversed to the normal order.
   
3. Certain drivers prefer a specific level of design. Not that they are faster with a slower car, but I mean in the sense that I've had teams in the past where I clearly have a #1 driver who is 20 seconds a race faster than the #2 driver every race in a season when I have a good car, and then when I have a poor car the following season the #2 driver is consistently faster for no particular reason.
   
4. Drivers have invisible attributes that we can not see as managers. Some drivers are just always slow regardless of how well trained they are.
   
5. Talent is out-right the most important attribute for qualifying, but not necessarily for race pace.
   
6. Slightly varied "dirty setups" are better than clean "all feels good" setups.
   
7. Some drivers are just way faster than other drivers when they are in clean air (once again, regardless of design/training, maybe an invisible attribute? I'm not 100% sure)
   
8. Experience is gained by winning a certain amount of races and not necessarily just races completed? I haven't worked this one out yet. Some peoples drivers experience stays static where as my driver Mansell has gained 4 experience in 3 seasons.
   

Again just theories. I might be talking through a hole in my butt but these are all things I've noticed consistently happening.

100% car here for myself and Gary, so there is no difference to car design now. So we 'should' be equal in that regard on all the remaining tracks.



Personally I don't see the setup one so much. Yes I load previous setups, but only from the same driver, and each season so far there has been a good amount of change to the setup, usually in all of the areas too. But that could just be my drivers.

1. Yep, I agree with that one fully.
   
2. I'm now more of the opinion that there is some sort of sliding scale for all the tracks, ranging from your best track to your worst track. Racing against Gary, I can see that almost every track in the last 7 or so of each season, he's faster than I am on all but one. Maybe he's not the fastest of our league, but he's faster than me. And we have the same cars, and fuel etc usually
   
3. Haven't noticed that myself, as when i have a rubbish car, I'm usually stuck in traffic, so have always blamed that for the loss of time. Not bothering to compare driver's results at the different % levels.
   
4. I'm fairly sure teams have them, so no reason that drivers don't have them also. Though I'm beginning to think there is a certain level on 2 or 3 stats that you need to have in order to get that final bit of speed from a driver, while the other stats in that training category are for all intents and purposes useless.
   
5. Talent is important yes, but I see a Very big gap usually between my drivers who are almost identical in stats now, with the same talent. One will qualify well, the other garbage. It's rare to get them both on the same sort of pace (good or bad) now. That could just be down to our elite league though, we normally have the first 25 cars or so covered by less than a second most races.
   
6. The way setups and driver stats work is... well it needs a total redo if you ask me. In order for the car to be fast, it needs a good setup, but in order for the driver to drive it fast, they need to be happy with it. The problem is that the better the driver gets, the more insane the setup needs to be. My pair now ask for 75-80 gearing EVERYWHERE, regardless of if it's Monza or Monaco. That's just rediculous.
   
7. Not sure if it's an invisible attribute, or one of the unimportant attributes that actually becomes important. I have noticed that some of my drivers have been better when leading their team mate, and a lot slower when behind.
   
8. I actually don't pay attention to experience stat, as it's something i can't train or alter much, so no idea on this one.
   

Oh no ! Eton is about to crack the system. :)

For this there is a potential explanation. The fast drivers are bored to death to drive a crappy car, so they are not putting much effort in it, thinking of anything else while driving, next weekend ski trip, the dream house he is about to buy, sexual fantasies and so on, while the slow drivers are motivating in beating the fast ones.



I was always curious of this driver's invisible attributes...

http://igpmanager.com/play/?url=team-driver/20701

What I don't get it is the graphical stats of drivers. Some have more, some less, but the maximum shape on each attribute must be given by a certain "invisible" (like Jason is saying - sorry I could call you Eton sometimes, since I always known you like that) attribute. I mean, I had drivers with big graphs (Tremblay), but he was slower than Janis on a general basis, although Janis had less defined shapes in graphical stats. I think this could be given by talent, but Janis has 14 and Tremblay 17 and I couldn't see an advantage for Tremblay generally speaking, not in qualify, nor in the race. Occasionally Tremblay outpaced Janis, but not on a general basis, as it should, since he had bigger stats and he was younger.

RE: The setups..

Sorry I should have been more clear. What I mean is:

When you max out the technical and mental your setups change quite a bit, and I don't think it's for the best. Take my old driver Ortega for example..

http://igpmanager.com/play/?url=team-driver/20913


Practically level 19 (level 18.8 or something) and he wants 1 wing at Monza for example, very low wings everywhere, and 95 gear at every track. For a while he was fast, but as I maxed out his technical and mental stats he just got slower and slower. At the time he became consistently slower than his team mate Mansell, who at the time was only level 10/11 with max physical/speed and nothing else. That's why I got rid of Ortega - I couldn't work out why he was so slow in comparison to a level 11 driver. The only advantage Mansell had was higher talent (18 instead of 17) and he was 8 years younger - Every single other stat was a ton lower.

Ortega started qualifying very poorly the higher his mental and technical training got. Even with a 95% car he was often starting P13/14 where as Mansell was always on the front row. He also used very high springs at all tracks (up to 85 at some tracks from memory) and a very low brake towards the end of his mental training. I think it was down to 26 in the dry and 5-10 in the wet.

You should have posted the pic with the graph on. :(

@ Alin - Don't worry about the name, I know you're referring to me when you say Eton. I don't mind :)

Also @ Alin. The size of the graph is determined by the drivers talent and experience. Higher talent = higher speed graph, and higher experience = higher defending and technical. Thus, if your driver had 20 talent and 20 experience, your graph would be completely full up when you get all stats to 19/20.

Also @ Alin again - Edited post, includes graph. I thought I had loaded that one sorry.

Thanks. My point. Look at the graph, on the technical side. At 19/20 it should be more towards max. Look at attacking. So, I think that's more than meets the eye in drivers.

Something isn't quite right. Look at my drivers. Nieto has 6 experience and 15 talent, while Hamilton has 4 experience and 14 talent. Still, his graph seems more round and he isn't nearly half trained as Nieto.

It's only relevant when the stats are maxed. EG a driver with 10 experience and max defending/technical will have a bigger graph than a driver who has 5 experience and max defending/technical

But Ortega has 19-20 in all stats and his attacking is far more proeminent than technical. Why ?

Another good example RE: drivers having a "fast track" is my two current drivers..

Mansell and Lauda. It's very clear in my league that Lauda is my second driver and Mansell is my fast driver. Both drivers are young (21 and 23) and both drivers have 18 talent. Mansell probably beats Lauda in atleast 9/10 races. He's just consistently faster.

Lauda is the better qualifier though, for whatever reason I have no idea. He will often put it on pole and/or atleast in front of Mansell.

I've only had Lauda for two seasons but he has dominated both Spanish GP's. Mansell can't even get close to him at Spain. For no particular reason he just hammers it around that one track in particular and is consistently slower almost everywhere else (though he has had the odd win like today at Germany and Bahrain earlier in the season).

So it appears that both drivers and teams have liked and disliked tracks randomly set.

And Jason, I had a driver much like Ortega, got him to level 18 also, but he got pathetically slow also. http://igpmanager.com/play/?url=team-driver/9732

These favoured and hated tracks really annoys me. There's nothing I can do over 5 of the last 6 races each season to even match Gary's team. All because apart from Japan, my team doesn't like those tracks.

And I've tried all sorts of strategies and tactics.

Or the randomly (almost always) bad pitstops hate me, as I'm regularly losing out 1-1.5s a stop most races now.

There's no fun at all in a 'game' where you literally can't win.

I definitely think there is something to the theory of drivers being fast and slow no matter what.  I have two teams on this game, and I operate them independently of each other which obviously tarnishes any comparison between them.

The driver I have on this account, Perei, is Level 9, 25 years of age with 14 Talent, and the driver on my main account, Sato (both are in single-car leagues) is Level 11, 28 years old with 16 Talent. Sato rates higher in every visible attribute except for Anticipation (12 vs. 7), Teamwork, Stamina, Overtaking (all equal), and Reflexes (14 vs. 12), but every time I compare them on the same track, Perei is faster, both in qualifying and in the race. It would take me at least a season's worth of races to train Perei to the point where he'd be equal level with Sato, and in each driver's respective last races (which were both at Germany, but two days apart), Perei was quicker in qualifying and completed the race distance in a shorter time (albeit by just a second or two), even though every visible stat seems to indicate that Sato is the better driver and also has the faster car of the two.