Driver Ratings
Ladies and Gentlemen; it is that time. Basically the highlight of my social calendar, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s also up there with your birthdays and Christmas in your yearly milestones t...
Forum Discussion
I know what experience is, but how does it affect the driver in race and qualifying.
It doesn't really have a direct impact on the actual performance that an AI driver will be outputting.
The descriptions are, or at least were in 2021ish, something like;
Pace - How fast a driver can go around a lap. It doesn't mean that they will do every lap at this level of speed (for example Verstappen would do every lap at 96 or whatever) but a general implier of their potential average speed), otherwise you'd have the same grid every week. The cream rises to the top, they say, so you'll mainly see this impacts qualifying and 50-100% races.
Racecraft - A drivers proclivity for going for an overtake. Drivers with higher ratings will go for more overtakes and work their way through the pack quicker. Also supposedly a link to how well they'll defend too, but i've not really seen much difference in behaviour from those with higher or lower as attributes like pace mean you've already overtaken them before a corner anyway. This is why F2 is pretty rubbish to play. The drivers are all similar in stats, both in driver ability and car balancing. but their lower racecraft means they never really try to overtake so it's literally just a procession until someone makes a mistake.
Awareness - A drivers propensity for both causing accidents with other drivers and also making errors. Drivers with higher ratings make fewer errors... apparently. However, I had 99 awareness Bottas making errors every other week whereas the F2 driver he replaced made like 2 all the previous season, so take that how you will.
Experience - The resource points that an AI driver will accrue over a weekend, mainly in practice. I've seen people say it affects the retirement likelihood and that but i've never really seen any correlation. In terms of actual racing, it doesn't have any real discernible affecters beyond the intangible link that drivers with higher experience ratings would naturally be good enough to stay on the grid long enough to have higher other ratings which do impact the meatier side of the race weekend. Pretty useless in Grand Prix modes but valuable in career modes.
Overall - A formula adjusted amalgamation of all the previous stats. Experience being the least important to it and pace being the most important. I do have the ratio of how weighted each stat is somewhere.
