Team Difficulty

[oxforddan]

Having played through with most teams, I think I have a rough understanding of the comparative difficulty for each of the starting teams in the original GPW 1998 dataset (i.e. without mods etc) - and I'm interested to see if others agree! So ... from the easiest to the least easiest, I rank them like this:

McLaren (difficulty *)

Best car. Excellent drivers at reasonable salary. Fully loaded budget. Barring purposeful mistakes or the unforeseen (engine supplier pulling out) you could easily win every season in your playthrough.

Williams (difficulty **)

Starts with the impediment of a customer engine, but you have the strength in depth to still just sneak the title in your first season, while also building a pukka package for season two onwards. You won’t be as flush with cash as McLaren, and will need to develop your car more, but you also won’t lack the money you need to succeed.

Ferrari (difficulty **)

You can absolutely smash both championships in year one. That isn’t your problem. Your problem is that every time you win a race you pay your lead driver a cool £600k, and at the end of the season you will need to pay around £8 million in bonuses. It will be ridiculously easy to bankrupt yourself by assuming you have money to burn, and forgetting you need to have around £10m in the bank to pay your winners’ bonuses and build your 1999 cars.

Benetton (difficulty **)

A challenging first season – but it is theoretically possible to win one or both titles. You will be able to get the right ingredients in place for season two to mount a serious title challenge. Once those are in place, there is no reason why you cannot maintain your dominance.

Jordan (difficulty ***)

The good news is that Ian Phillips will earn you lots of big money deals for 1999. The bad news is that your 2 star designer is going to design an absolute dog of a car for 1999 and there's nothing you can do about it.

Sign two decent drivers for 1999 – you will be able to afford it. You probably won't win the title in 1999, but with a works engine and tyre deal you might just manage in 2000.

Sauber (difficulty ***)

Incredibly, you can win the title in 1999 using your three-star designer. The trick is to survive the 1998 campaign by selling enough of the team to eliminate your budget deficit, ensure you get a works deal with Peugeot, and sign Pedro Diniz alongside a competent but low cost lead driver like Alex Wurz.

Prost (difficulty ***)

There is no way 1998 will be anything other than awful given your starting car, but you’re also well set to make lots of sponsorship money. Sign a good lead driver such as Rubens Barrichello, weather 1999 as best you can, then use a good car and a works engine to challenge for the title in 2000. Prost are very comparable to Jordan in playthrough style.

Arrows (difficulty ****)

How difficult you want to make this playthrough depends on your honesty. If you re-run the Australian GP until Red Bull offer you a team sponsor deal, you can advance very quickly – John Barnard will design a stonking car for 1999. If you play honestly, you’re in for the longer haul as it will depend heavily on how soon you can get Red Bull or Buzzin Hornets free to sponsor you. The biggest advance of a title sponsor is that it frees you to choose a competent (relatively) low cost driver such as Wurz or Fisichella, who can make full use of John Barnard’s design.

Stewart (difficulty ****)

Stewart are comparable to Arrows – play honestly and you’ll have two or three difficult years while you wait for a title sponsor. Get the Red Bull deal to shore up funds for 1999 and 2000 (at minimum) and you’ll have a base to build from. Your 1999 car won’t be well designed, so getting a decent designer is a must to build your base in 2000.

Tyrrell (difficulty *****)

As with Minardi, you will have an awful and hideous 1998, doing all you can to survive (at another stage I will write my opinion on ‘how to’ survive with these two teams). Tyrrell have one immediate advantage – Mike Gasgoyne will design a decent car for 1999. While you won’t avoid two pay drivers in 1999, if you can get a partner Mugen deal for 1999, there is a good chance you can pick up Buzzin Hornets or Blondes for 2000. A title sponsor is the game changer – that gives you the funds needed to build the team infrastructure, and eventually hire quicker drivers.

Minardi (difficulty *****)

The Minardi playthrough is Tyrrell difficulty on steroids. Even if you design a 100% effective car for 1999 (highly unlikely) your two star designer will produce an absolute dud. Stop the future rot by signing Mike Gasgoyne, balance your budget with pay drivers and a partner engine deal, and focus on designing a 100% efficient 2000 car. Morale will start to pick up as the team stops haemorrhaging money, and a decent 2000 car will give you a reasonable chance of picking up Red Bull or Buzzin Hornets as a title sponsor.

What do you think folks? Would you rate any of these teams as easier/harder to play through?

[manuel]

Do you play without the GPWedit? Because with this, not only the designer is important for the handling

[oxforddan]

Sept 17, 2021 15:52:30 GMT 2 manuel said:

Do you play without the GPWedit? Because with this, not only the designer is important for the handling

I do not play with GPWEdit as yet - on my list of things to try at some stage! I also like the idea of learning how to beat the game "as released" before advancing to quality of life/realism improvements!

[jops]

I'd put Jordan as a 2*

You can actually win the title in 98. Depends on if you get lucky with wet races, but essentially, if you always use all your setup points on the car for Hill & put it into Weather, he'll walk every single wet race. Generally, Brazil, Silverstone, Belgium, Nurburg and Suzuka have a great chance of being wet. (you can get a couple wins with Sauber & Alesi from same move) - Discovered this from the manual like 14 years ago, it says on setups something like "this is the performance of the track, so setting grip at 7 instead of 5 for Silverstone, the car will handle like there is more grip. So basically put it all into "dry" and when ts wet they'll drive closer to dry lap times...

Also a 3* designer is good enough to win you the title with a high power Engine. on the OG performance curve the difference is so minimal between 60&100% you can fairly easily win, always go for a good WW driver and someone cheap like DC/Frentzen.

With Minardi/Tyrrell, finally, quite commonly, the non-F1 drivers will randomly become pay drivers if not signed. So always sign Takagi & Diniz at the back, and then if a good non-F1 driver changes get rid of Takagi for free. Best i've ever seen was $-75m haha. But ive also seen a fair few between 10-20m so its as good as a title sponsor.


I always found Arrows quite hard because of their crap engine and in base game they have Coughlin as designer at 2* (barnard is TD so no impact on chassis) so you generally end up with a dogshit car, can be way more of a slog than Stewart or Prost.

[simul810]

In the licensing tab in the game you can receive money too, instead of only relying on sponsors.  You will only sign fan club and clothing as a poor team but you could find paying driver bonuses easier with publishing, games, chronometers and cars.

With lower grid teams I usually put a large percentage of staff for the first few races on licencing deals and allocating 3% - 5% on each engine and cash sponsor negotiation.  Then add more staff to any sponsorship deals after signning.

For some reason a 1 stop strategy over 2 stops can help you sign sponsors, who will say you are not fast enough.

[oxforddan]

Sept 18, 2021 0:17:29 GMT 2 jops said:

I'd put Jordan as a 2*

You can actually win the title in 98. Depends on if you get lucky with wet races, but essentially, if you always use all your setup points on the car for Hill & put it into Weather, he'll walk every single wet race. Generally, Brazil, Silverstone, Belgium, Nurburg and Suzuka have a great chance of being wet. (you can get a couple wins with Sauber & Alesi from same move) - Discovered this from the manual like 14 years ago, it says on setups something like "this is the performance of the track, so setting grip at 7 instead of 5 for Silverstone, the car will handle like there is more grip. So basically put it all into "dry" and when ts wet they'll drive closer to dry lap times...

Might try that strategy! I was very conservative in my first playthrough with Jordan and opted for Panis and Takagi in 1999, and no unnecessary spending in 1998. Would be interested to see the difference.

Sept 18, 2021 0:17:29 GMT 2 jops said:

With Minardi/Tyrrell, finally, quite commonly, the non-F1 drivers will randomly become pay drivers if not signed. So always sign Takagi & Diniz at the back, and then if a good non-F1 driver changes get rid of Takagi for free. Best i've ever seen was $-75m haha. But ive also seen a fair few between 10-20m so its as good as a title sponsor.

Yup! I have a Minardi playthrough that was based on 3 years of Diniz and Takagi paying the bills, then winning the title with Frentzen in Year 5. Certain aspects in the base game are massively overpowered (Mike Gasgoyne and Harvey Postlethwaite; Peugeot Works engines) and can get any team competitive very quickly.

Sept 18, 2021 0:17:29 GMT 2 jops said:

I always found Arrows quite hard because of their crap engine and in base game they have Coughlin as designer at 2* (barnard is TD so no impact on chassis) so you generally end up with a dogshit car, can be way more of a slog than Stewart or Prost.

How interesting! I need to try that as I have a vague memory that my year 2 Arrows wasn't terrible (but my memory has also erroded with two small children depriving me of sleep ...)

Sept 19, 2021 13:49:11 GMT 2 simul810 said:

In the licensing tab in the game you can receive money too, instead of only relying on sponsors.  You will only sign fan club and clothing as a poor team but you could find paying driver bonuses easier with publishing, games, chronometers and cars.

With lower grid teams I usually put a large percentage of staff for the first few races on licencing deals and allocating 3% - 5% on each engine and cash sponsor negotiation.  Then add more staff to any sponsorship deals after signning.

For some reason a 1 stop strategy over 2 stops can help you sign sponsors, who will say you are not fast enough.

I've truthfully struggled with licensing (and hospitality) and spend a ton of % on sponsor deals. I need to have a "write off" game where I try some alternative income strategies and see if I can learn some new tricks.

Thank you all for thoughts and suggestions - fresh food for thought!