Extremely disappointed to find myself back here again reporting the same issue 4 MONTHS later. Took a break to let the game smooth out only to return to see the the same, simple issue I brought up 4 ...
Ideas
Regarding the Paul Aron situation, given that it's a unique scenario where there isn't a proper solution (give him 17 and people say it's retired and shouldn't be used or give him anything else and people complain he's not using his real number) it was likely decided to let him keep 17 as it's consistent with all of the other F2 drivers who still use their F2 number once being promoted to F1.
I don't remember how the numbering worked in previous games off the top of my head, but just because it was a certain way previously doesn't mean that's how it's going to work going forward. If the FOM tells EA they want F2 drivers to always be represented by their IRL number then that's how the games going to be programmed.
I appreciate that you're not thrilled with how the current system works, but it is working as intended and I'm not anticipating any changes during this games life cycle. I'll tag EA_cuervo, one of the community managers here, to make sure your feedback gets passed along to the dev team so they can put their heads together and see if something can be done differently in future games.