F1 game 2019

[RandoEFC+]

Started my career with Alfa Romeo. Hit the development pretty hard earlier in the year and had the 4th fastest car for a while. Got points in most of the early races, including 5th at Monaco, where I miraculously drove all 78 laps without crashing out, though I did give my front wing a couple of good twattings.

Then I was having big issues with gearbox and engine wear, so spent loads of R&D points on durability for ages. Now we're in a tight group with Haas, McLaren and Renault all with similar performance levels. Racing Point have been the big movers and are clearly the 4th best team, can compete with Red Bull sometimes. Found it hard to get into Q3 the last few races. Seeing as I've put the work into the durability of the car I will probably do another year with Alfa Romeo but my reputation is pretty high with every team now so after that I'll probably have my pick of cars for year 3.

I've only had one driver change in my game. After Hungary, Raikkonen swapped with Stroll, so Stroll is now my team mate. I've been adapting the difficulty for each track as it varies a lot, my aim when Raikkonen was my team mate was to be on his pace, maybe 0.1s or 0.2s faster than him if I'm really happy with my qualifying lap. With Stroll I aim to be a bit further ahead because I know he isn't one of the best AI drivers like Raikkonen. Keep a list of the difficulty I used the previous year at each track, if my weekend was too easy then I nudge it up by 1 for next year, and the opposite if it's too hard, hopefully this gives me a reasonably realistic career overall.

Just finished Singapore where I got 9th behind the Ferraris, Mercs, RBs and Racing Points. Went Medium-Medium-Soft on strategy while the Mclarens went Soft-Soft-Medium and spent loads of time in traffic. It was fun.

Worst race was Spain, where I took a grid penalty and couldn't get away from the likes of Albon and Stroll and crashed out trying to unlap myself from Bottas who had a mechanical problem so was slow.

I really like the career mode overall, the immersion is good, the downsides are repetitive interview questions, silly driver moves, which thankfully I haven't suffered too bad yet, and unrealistic development speed. Racing Point have gained double the performance points that Ferrari have over the year so far and I've seen other people getting to the 3rd year of their career mode and it's Haas and Toro Rosso or something daft who have the fastest cars.