DRT-Apophis

Other than the increased pace of the new car that demands more from the driver, another thing is the significantly increased of your rear downforce from upgrades. Based on my personal experience, the MyTeam car is actually exceptionally well-balanced when it's stock, sometimes the upgrades actually made it either too aggressive or lazy/sluggish on the control.

Was there any rule changes during your 2nd and 3rd season? There might be a possibility that because there isn't any change on your 4th season, now your car is much faster than anything you had driven before, the performance difference between you hit the first round (Aus for example) of this season compare with the past could now be very significant. The car setup might need some adjustment too for the new car.

When the engines aren't completely stock or completely maxed out, I believe they have slightly different characteristic from one another. Was the Renault engine more/less powerful than the Merc PU when you made the switch during the start of the new season? If so it might be the sudden changes in torque/power delivery characteristic or the overall speed difference that's catching you off-guard. Also, it might be because now you're revisiting the same track with a much more powerful car, since you're hitting each corner at much higher speed, it'll certain take some time to readjust your approach. I've had the exact same problem when I first entered season 2, even though I was using the same engine as season 1.

I'm not sure what tier of facility AlphaTauri starts with, but yes, with enough facility boost (let's say just +10 pace), Gasly will still be a monster because his stats are already either very close or actually maxed out.

Well if the facilities are at the highest tier then even F2 drivers are gonna be quite near the top in terms of performance. Tier 1 is +5 Tier 2 is +10 Tier 3 is +15 But the stats topped out at only 100, so the best F1 drivers don't really get too much boost from the facilities, for the slower drivers the effects are quite significant.

Did you mean the + stats? If so, the + stats are boost from your team's personnel facilities and those boosts stay with your teammate until they left, but will apply to your new teammate and so on. If you're talking about MyTeam mode, it can be the same as above (permanent boost from facility), or they're those temporary boost from training activities in your calendar that only last one race. Another thing is AI driver's stats does increase or decrease naturally overtime, it's part of their growth or decline (based on their real ages I believe)

Although I don't have this problem with the Xbone controller in this game, try to zoom your eyes downward and look at the way you turn the analog stick when you're having the turning problem, it's possible that you're not turning the analog stick at 90 degrees to one direction during those tight turns therefor the car is not turning at full-lock. I had this problem when I was playing Forza back in the days, always trying to "lock" my thumb to kinda fight against overturning my car during the med-high speed turns. Before I know it, my thumb had became very stiff and often only pushing the analog stick at a tilt angle (like only roughly 45-60 degrees) and was unable to turn the car at tight turns as if the car has very narrow steering angle, until I finally paid attention to what my thumb was doing and started to practice on making my thumb to move the analog stick with more flexibility.

I downloaded this mod too, sadly the color combination just didn't work well for me even after awhile so I reverted back to vanilla. If there're some white and black mixed it I can see this combination to work, though I heard modding existing team's livery has very limited freedom for the modder so may be this is the best they could do. Still an impressive amount of effort nonetheless. Peter's Lavazza Williams livery's color combination is very pleasing to the eye and fits in the grid perfectly, can't wait for his McDonalds Haas because that one is another looker.

This could be it. Though even it's tricky, it's still possible to have the green and pink/blue to work well together, it just needs clever placements and a mix of some other colors to balance things out (Not just slap a huge Pink/Blue section right on top of the Green background, that's a crime imo LOL)

Well, it's only difficult with the livery editor and the kinda paintjobs we have LOL

As much as I would like to see a F1 rocking a classy British racing green livery, I'm not sure how it would work if it's sponsored by BWT, which their main theme were usually a light pink. The problem is, green and pink (or any color similar to red) is a bit of a tricky combination. It's very easy to make the car looks like an oddly shaped watermelon or a Christmas tree, which imo it's a bit unpleasant for a race car. For lime green, I've a feeling it might work with the pink if it's balanced right alongside with the blue BWT logo. It would definitely stand out since we'll no longer have a yellow car on the grid. (Renault become Alpine)

Think of it as playing the Mclaren Honda simulator 😬, where you absolutely struggle but keep pushing to try to develop the car to catch others. The thing is, in the game you could actually match other's pace if you put enough effort into it, unlike in real life where it's just a hole that you'll never know how deep it is. The only stat that has actual significant difference between each team when maxed out is Aero, the rest are either almost or absolutely identical.

The only track where I had a very noticeable disadvantage on straight line speed is Singapore, because I ran 10-11 on that track. But I think you're correct, AI seems to just stick with the same mid-low downforce setup across all tracks and so they look to be always faster down the straight unless you do the same.

270km/h is indeed excessively low. From my experience, when I first started the game without knowing all the basic mechanics, my Honda PU at one point could barely reach a painful 295km/h down the straight on Hanoi, but that was still much higher than 270.

How's the wear rate of your ICE and turbo? Did you increase your fuel-flow and used the overtake button down the straight? If so, were you running out of ERS and engine is overheating by using them too much? There's also a limit of how much ERS you could deploy in a lap. What about your car setting? Were you running a bit too much downforce or toe-angle? May be ride-height is too high? btw, Williams (& RP/Merc) has the most powerful engine from the start post patch, even if they have the highest drag, they can still accelerate and reach their top speed much faster than you reach yours.

In qualifying the car is run at MAX fuel flow. Ferrari engine had received a nerf after 1.12 patch, they're now slightly worse than Renault's PU if you don't count the 4 manufacturer upgrades at the start (but will catch back up after upgrades). I'm not sure what the Haas R&D trees look like, but try to focus on reducing drag because if I remember correctly, Haas had the 3rd highest drag in the field (Williams 1st, post patched Ferrari 2nd).

It's totally worth it. I almost dropped the game after test driving around in an AlphaTauri in Melbourne, kept spinning out and couldn't point the car to anywhere I wanted. Was deciding whether I should turn on the assists at one point but I persisted of not doing so. Best decision ever. The satisfaction that came from being able to handle these cars and drive competitively is absolutely addicting.

But wasn't that only said they're not gonna be in our current game? The OP was asking about the next game. Though, to the OP, your guess is as good as anyone's guess.

Do you play on PC? If so I highly recommend you to install the Extreme Damage Mod to drastically increase the likelihood of AI retiring from terminal damage. I'm almost certain the reason why SC seems so rare to happen is because AI hardly ever receive terminal damages naturally in the vanilla game, only when they have engine failure in specific spot of the track then there's a chance that could trigger the Safety Car. For driver transfer, based on my experience in MyTeam mode, you're MUCH more likely to see drivers switching around if you hire a driver from the current F1 grid, retirement usually only triggers F2 driver to replace them and the rest remain still. For Driver's Career game mode, I'm not sure if there's other method to make that happen more likely, but make sure you check the Driver Transfer option is ON in the setting.

Because if you use fast forward in Qualifying the AI will cheat, their laptimes are scripted unless you run in real-time, it's the same for all tracks.

I think the amount of AI mistakes are quite well balanced atm. I've seen many locking up their brakes, spinning while touching wheels, getting loose and losing momentum on corner exit, etc. I would imagine implementing the kinda major human-like mistakes described by OP are probably a little difficult and complicated to get right, as of now even the occasional engine failure of AI got me frustrated because of how scripted they felt, as well as it made me feel dirty to win in such way.

I think it should, the patch applied right on top of their starting stats, plus the amount of stats they grew over you career progression. At least that's what happened for me last time.

LOLOLOL yea I did 🤣🤣🤣 (did forgot the first time though 😝) The effects seems to only applied to my car, but the strange thing is the damage sensitivity worked on the both me & the AI (I tweaked the sensitivity for individual team). Russell was 1.4 sec slower than me in qualifying at 104% Australia with the tweaked Williams, at the same difficulty Mick was only about 0.5sec slower than me in Myteam's Ferrari (no tweak), I was no where close to the speed & handling of this Williams with the stock MyTeam car.

I just went and played around with the chassis and aero values a little with the Williams the whole night, was trying to make them somewhat close to the performance of the new Pink Merc, which seems to be successful because I just won the Driver's Career Australian GP at 106% AI with it and by qualifying 3rd. Though I noticed changing the performance values probably doesn't affect your teammate's (or just about any AI) car because George still somehow quali and finished very near the bottom. I've tried to run in other game mode and watched the mod Williams lap time in qualifying. Be it fast forward or real time, George is still about 0.5 - 0.6 sec slower than the AlphaTauri, and it's the same result after I reverted it back to the original stats. I wonder if I did anything wrong?

Yea I myself too have only just started to mess with the damage sensitivity last night lol, cuz I found the Extreme Damage Mod (even with just the Realistic setting) is a bit too sensitive on the suspensions detachment value especially for city street (Baku & Monaco mostly), Ai don't really know how to not hit each other in the very tight sections 😬 I'm looking to see if I could play with the chassis and aero a little bit to buff the bottom 3 teams.