Why are these cars so close?

So, in my league that I'm racing in, a new team has just joined. They won the first race, and so I decided to spy on them to see their component percentage.

My components are at about 80% each, and theirs are at only about 5...

How does that work out? How are they so competitive if I'm 16x more 'powerful' than them?

Their drivers are 2 levels above mine, but honestly I don't believe it'd make that much of a difference in those terms...

Their designers are probably 2 levels up on you too, but i don't know if that makes a difference.  It should.  Were you on the same strat.  Are they on the same suppliers as you?  The driver really does make a big difference.  Check out what talent does to performance, if trained properly, search away on the forum.

Hi @Nico ,, may you reffer to my team 8-)

Here some clues about my performance:

• My drivers are 20 tal and 19 tal
  
• 9 and 8 lvl meaning more variables was worked
  
• One of my drivers are lightest
  
• i have lvl 8 staff
  
• i do setups well
  
• i have track notes.
  

You could improve:

• Attending races and being subscibed is a power tool to know and manage the DRS zone. And know the other teams car hardware and tyre performances even error or mistakes with tyres, KERS quantitty. You could manage well your tyre and you could correct fuel errors and cold tyres. you lost a lot of time with cool tyres (blue) or fuel mistakes cost you like 20 or 25 seconds.
  
• Your both crivers are lvl 5 right now... there are better drivers before 8 level.
  
• YOu have subscribed tool to know best talent drivers... that is powerfull too, because you could only select the better options of all the game. 
  
• Level 5 drivers are not powerfull in its overal values... and is long to train one... you will be next level soon. you could keep changing your staff and you will note a small boost of performance.
  
• You have a higher level of develop for rookie tier. you need a good car parts but the problem is the money. 
  
• Coment every 5 days about the top finance sponsors to get full money of publicity to afford a 100% quiality car. (10/10 smiley face) they pay 1500000 per race.
  

Do this and you will note a difference.

atm i do most of that, i have the best drivers available (just need a bit of training)

I was just a bit shocked at the small gap regardless of performance of car

First thing, can't expect to just sign on iGP and in a week be top dog. Doesn't work like that, you have to work for it, actually develop a team, find what works well for you. The three most important factors of drivers are going to be: Talent, Speed and Health (If health is low you can use your Reward Points-under account-to instantly restore a drivers health). If you are missing just one of these then you're already on the backfoot. When training your drivers make sure you focus on Health as much as you do Speed, it basically allows your drivers to perform longer. I currently see managers get really good drivers (I mean 20 talent drivers) and fail to keep their health up so after a few laps I'm cruising past them. 

I never said I expected to be a top dog. I was just asking why an 80% car was 'slower' than a 5% car.