My research levels were at Excellent on everything bar 2, one was superb and the other very good. Everything is now at Very Good, dispite all my designers being assigned to research.
So I am taking everyone is seeing the same issue then since mine started at Excellent or Very good and have dropped to Okay & Unsure with what I classify as limited development. (Each part at least once)
I think these are dropping to fast but since we all started higher then normal and Frank did state it should take season to reach full research level I am not sure that it's not working correctly.
That being said I know that my designer is Very Good & Good and I have had him since the start of the season so if you think that I researched on average every part at least once every 2 weeks then by 28 weeks in my research knowledge would be somewhere around: (let me do the math) the head designers levels already assuming that each research added a new level every 2 weeks.(Answer was 28/2=14 so stats are based on 10 so should be all superb research)
Even if it was on a sliding scale which I know Frank likes using that brings that brings the answer to 7 or Okay/ Good area by now.
Here is what I think is happening: Frank gave us a break on the development front with giving the development boost that we had last season based on the designers top stats as suggested in his post but didn't give any of us a break in research meaning research has started at 1 terrible for everyone so teams that are researching now will not see any huge difference until they have researched at least 13 weeks earliest or 26 weeks latest before some start to get back to the research levels that we started this season with.
So for an all Superb designer to have effect on development you will need to focus on research level for close to 39 weeks or 3 season before you start to see the benefits of having an all superb designer. (And this makes sense)
This can in the future since not implemented yet be sped up by having junior designer assisting in the research and development of your car. How quick I am guessing that will be determined by how good you junior staff are but here a guess:
Head Designer is superb, Junior designer is Superb & Junior Designer is superb meaning it would take about 13 weeks to see research level reach superb status compared to 39 weeks.
Change one of the junior designers to Unsure and add half a season so 19 weeks for all superb research.
Add two unsure junior designers and add another 6 weeks for 25 weeks of research before all superb.
So this will be costly since I am currently running a design team with head & 2 designers at salary of $1 million per week and not factoring in the research costs.
So we will need to decide to spend $13 million per season (rough) to speed up the research levels or spend $4 million per season not to speed up the research.
Interesting new dynamic to the game really!!
So in short research levels are dropping since we are luck if they are anything better then terrible or Bad at the current moment!!
I get the feeling once we start to build facilities and have more staff we may be able to increase research to the levels we expect? In reality my crappy little team isnt going to have great research levels unless i develop some facilities and get more of a development team in place i guess.
You have a good team and setup that has resulted in a good car 
