Performance Patch

I'm happy to wait a little longer to make sure it's right. The new Ferrari floor recently introduced at Austria seems to be working so well at Silverstone so far this weekend.

Hopefully Ferrari will move up in the team rankings in terms of performance in the patch should they continue to improve.

Driver ratings are ruining career. Piastri is far too slow, the current wdc leader is miles off Norris, constantly being knocked out in q1/q2 it’s very annoying. Same with antonelli always knocked out in q1 without fail. I would suspect there needs to be some kind of buff to some drivers as well as the performance of some or their cars

A performance patch is definitely needed. The pecking order has changed quite a bit since the game was released.

For me some changes are needed. McLaren are still the fastest but Ferrari now have to be second. They are in P2 in the constructors championship and the new floor and rear suspension have clearly given them a significant increase in performance.

1: McLaren 

2: Ferrari 

3: Red Bull 

4: Mercedes 

Sauber need to be faster now too.

In my opinion it would be in this order:

Mclaren

Mercedes

Ferrari

Red Bull

Sauber

Williams

Aston Martin

Racing Bulls

Haas

Alpine

With Sauber, Williams, Aston Martin and Racing Bulls taking turns at the front.

Some cars work better in different scenarios than they do in other ones so balancing the performance is also a reflection of recency bias.

For example, you may have a car that hasn't been developed at all that looked slow in the early Asian legs but suddenly looks better in the European phases simply because the tracks and/or conditions suit the car more.  Obviously there is an underlying level of performance in each car but it's how you stick the likes of de Vries and Colapinto in a Williams after the mid-season and suddenly they're doing well... because the car is doing well. 

There are clear tier levels though. 

McLaren are, and will be, the top of the food chain for most races.

There'll be some races that suit the Mercedes and some where they barely even look like a competitive team. Similar to Ferrari but Ferrari seem slightly more rounded so they'd be slightly ahead of Mercedes in the hierarchy for me.  Red Bull are hard to judge because they have one guy who is the cream of the crop and a second driver that is the driving like cream that has gone off.   I'd say Ferrari marginally over Mercedes and a small gap to Red Bull.  Max's driver rating should then pull him into the same level as the better cars and leave Yuki battling for 7ths and 8th at best.  However, he's not doing that so shove him to the bottom. 

I'd have Williams marginally ahead of the midfield. I think it helps that their driver-pairing is probably the best of the midfield but they'd be a tiptoe ahead of the rest.

Aston Martin and Sauber, I'd feel are neck-and-neck.  Only a smidge off Williams and constantly on the precipice of points. You could probably chuck in VCARB here but i'd have them a jot behind with the Haas team. 

Alpine are the bottom-feeders. I'm not just saying that because their second-seat driver is absolutely garbage but even Gasly, who is a known quantity, isn't pulling trees up neither. He was doing bits in an Alpha Tauri that wasn't on the pace but can't do it in an Alpine.  Plus they deserve to be last for not taking the sport seriously by the allocation of that second seat.  I wouldn't have them far off Haas though. 

So, in summary; with a rudimentary rating to showcase closeness.

McLaren - 9/10 - Pretty good at every track

Max's Red Bull - 8.5/10 - Challenging at every track for wins but mainly podium battling with Ferrari

Ferrari - 8/10 - Podiums mainly

Mercedes - 7.8/10 - Sneak a podium at most tracks. 

Williams - 6.5/10 - Consistent points scorers 

Aston - 6.05/10 - Occasional points 

Sauber - 6/10 - Occasional points 

VCARB - 5.5/10 - Occasional points but rarer than the above 

Haas - 5.3/10 - Occasional points but rarer than Aston/Sauber

Yuki's Red Bull - 5.2/10 - Might sneak a point on a good day.

Gasly's Alpine - 5/10 - Participation trophy. Mixes it with back of the midfield and very rare points. 

Colapinto's Alpine - 3/10.  Only has a reverse gear. 

The problem with a performance patch is that you all got no clue what the real pecking order is.. Nor do Codemasters, commentators or the teams themselfes.. And me of course😂

The results we see are always dictated by the drivers, current Aston Martin could have been the fastest car this weekend over a single lap but a very average Stroll and clearly aged Alonso might not perform to its potential.. Might be the same that Alonso still has it and Stroll pulled out one of his few great performances and the car was actually barely 4th best, we cant say, there is no proper (scientifically acceptable) way of measuring driver skill and you never know if a driver just underperformed or his teammate performed miracles (e.g. Alonso-Stroll) and thus its even harder to gauge pure car performance.

Also a problem is that each driver performs different with every car, best example are Hamilton and Sainz who are (despite his age in case of Hamilton) really good drivers but struggle with cars not really matching them/their needs. Which makes cars like the Red Bull very hard to gauge, as Verstappen drags the car to top territory but his teammates often dont even make it out of Q1, is it just a bad car and Verstappens talent allowing him to perform miracles or is it such a difficult car to extract performance out of that only very few drivers can adapt to it and extract near the maximum performance but the performance itself isnt too bad? We cant say..

Next problem is that Codemasters tend to balance car performances with driver ratings (pace) so instead of making the Sauber car faster they often tend to give the drivers more pace or nerf the drivers of now slower cars.. Which wont get the wished for effect for every player who wants to race in said cars. Only the AI results get closer to reality (but those are far from it anyway)

Then we have this years AI inconsistency in qualifying due to making too many mistakes over a single lap which doesnt look like they will patch it at all.. Drivers dont perform within a range of over a full second IRL and so shouldnt ingame, yet the too high mistake rate leads to exactly that and results like McLaren drivers out in Q1.. So we wont get realistic results because of that too..

Then there is the overall probelm with qualifying pace and race pace which is not in a single way reflected ingame. There are the means with engine temps and tyre temps but as the AI isnt simulating either properly (or at all in terms of engine temps) there cant be what makes the McLaren car the dominant car it is or the Red Bull the qualifying merchant it was in many races.. Despite this being one of the few things we can guesstimate the most accurate out of it all as we can see the differences between qualifying performance and race performance - yes some of it might be driver related still due to driving style killing tyres but to a lesser extent than qualifying pace.. So the question here would really be what do you want in the game? Qualifying pace for the cars? Race pace for the cars? Because you cant have both in realistic ways and the whole race dynamic wont be very exciting due to no changes of pace throughout a grand prix or even qualifying session with weather changes like we saw in hungary qualifying..

Last problem would be the dynamic of car characteristics leading to different performance at different tracks, mechanical grip, low wing angle downforce/drag, high wing angle downforce/drag, weight distribution, engine power, drs efficiency, suspension geometry and of course engine and tyre temperature management (including brake temps). All these are not properly reflected in the game and cant really to a proper depth as it would require way too much data that the teams will never give up..

The best they can do with their fairly useless AI training in regards of temperatures is a hybrid between quali pace and race pace which could look similar like this IMO:

McLaren

Ferrari/Mercedes (different characteristics leading to different cars being ahead depending on the track)

Red Bull (as explained above, difficult to say)

Aston Martin/Sauber (different characteristics leading to different cars being ahead depending on the track)

Williams (spain TD seems to have hit them the hardest)/Racing Bulls 

Haas (better on race pace than quali pace)

Alpine (better in qualifying than race pace)

The biggest problem I always see is when they give a driver in a weak car a great rating and then if he moves in your Career mode to the best car he becomes unbeatable. And since performance is dynamic in the career modes after a few races what does the performance patch accomplish? So really it only matters in GP mode, F1 World solo, and the first few races of a Career. 

I understand it may be important to some, but I would rank other issues far higher on the priority list. They could all be generic teams and drivers as long as the racing was great and the bugs were few  

I've already given up too, I'm playing F1 24, especially since it hasn't changed much from one year to the next. They should change the engine for this game, because it's been the same for years.