Picking the wrong car/tune/etc for the track can be fun too - I race every car and try a lot of community tunes, so I’m rarely in an optimal setup in any race. It’s a nice challenge and a way to learn how different cars can compare.
If you get frustrated being in the pack or not getting gold in a particular car, you can ease up the drivatar and add assists til you reach the balance of ease vs difficulty that suits your mood.
It would be nice if it did give you more of a challenge but it just gives the demolition derby time to smash you up as you try to get through the mayhem.
Is it just me, or should parity be one of the biggest fundamentals in FM5? I don’t believe there should be a “best car” for each track. I think that you should be able to upgrade/tune any car to the correct PI-range for the race and still be competitive. You shouldn’t be able to select a specific car to shore-up a win.
I wish so badly that this were the case. I rarely use leaderboard cars, most of them I don’t even like, so I am stuck using weaker cars and getting smoked all because I chose with my heart, not my absolute desire to win.
As for the original point of this thread, yes, and I think they chose to put us in the back to make it a challenge but inadvertently created a demolition derby by forcing us to smash our way to the front just to get the win. That or lower the drivatar difficulty to were we are clearly faster and can then take our time a bit and make as clean a race out of it as we can. But that just takes so much realism out of it for me. It really boils down to an issue of lap count. Give us a few more laps and we can win on higher difficulty and make it more realistic/fun.
A lot of the problem of starting last would be solved if the career races weren’t so short. It’s basically forcing you to either be a rude driver or take the gamble and hang back and hope you can chase the leaders down once the pack opens up a bit. Hanging back isn’t an issue on lower drivatar levels but typically if I choose to do the hang back on Expert or above I simple can’t chase that 3rd place car down in time.
The best way I’ve found to provide a good challenge but still practice clean racing is create a nice long race on free play, take off slow letting the rest of the field get ahead of you as if you started last, then play your chase down game.
Until they figure out a way to make a competitive AI I think we’re always going to have to start at the back of the field.