DISCLAIMER: as every other manager games, if you want to succeed in the game you need to collect data and analyze them in a spreadsheet or whereever you want. If you don't like to do it you will have hard time to compete to other teams.
So you are just here after you log into the game, what to do now? i'm going to give you some tips to put your team in the right direction for the first weeks, then it's all up to you
MANAGEMENT -> facilities
1) Build HQ1, it's free and it is instantly built. It gives you 5 staff space, it means that designers + mechanics + coaches + commercials + scouts can be 5 at max. Yes 5 is a very little number for staff
2) I suggest to build even the HQ2 asap (it take a lot of real time to build facilities), maybe choose the plan B option (payment per hour) so you have time later to decide if you need a loan and for what.
3) After the HQ2 is built, you can build up to 2 modules, i suggest to build 2 staff modules so you can have more staff members in your team, in this moment you need to put the basis for your future team. Then i would go directly for HQ5, if money is needed take a loan.
MANAGEMENT -> suppliers
1) Sign with suppliers for the current season at least (remember that to start developing a car you need to have a contract with a engine supplier).
2) For the very first season choose the cheapest suppliers.
3) Choose Always a "normal" deal for now or you will waste administrative points.
MANAGEMENT -> finances
1) Just remember that in the overview page the Weekly cost of the suppliers aren't take into consideration, but it's only an issue of this page. Add your Weekly suppliers cost to have the correct Weekly expenses.
2) In the balance history tab you can see the correct Numbers.
3) Sometimes there can be some miscalcutation bug about taxes.
4) I suggest to track your balance in a spreadsheet.
MANAGEMENT -> sponsor
1) Car has 15 sponsor spots, from section 5 to section 1. Section 5 sponsor gives you the higher amount of money, so start negotiating with section 5 sponsors, then section 4 and so on.
2) Don't give more than 1 spot to the same sponsor, or you will lose money.
3) Choose wisely the sponsors you want to negotiate with. You are a new team, don't choose sponsors with 4 star / 5 star wealth, start from 3 star wealth instead.
4) Watch out how many teams are negotiating vs how many teams can sign with the sponsor. if there is only 1 spot for signed teams and there are more than 1 team negotiating, someone could lost many commercial points.
5) When you are negotiating, the first step is to put your offer in the form, then push the "update negotiations" button. After you did it you can read the feedback of your offer. You can update your negotiation offer to fullfill the desire of the sponsor, or if you don't like the sponsor's requests you can pull back from negotiation. If a sponsor say that your relation are to low, you have to increase their interest investing commercial points on it.
6) After you did some negotiations, you will start to understand how to optimize them.
RACING -> cars
1) Cars are made by parts from suppliers: engine, tyres and brakes; and by parts built within the team: chassis, gearbox, fuel tank, suspension, electrical system, steering system, floor, front wing, rear wing, sidepods, airbox, diffuser and exhaust.
2) In this page you can create cars, named them, assign drivers and parts to every cars. To partecipate to testing, qualy or race you need to assign a driver and every parts to the car.
R&D -> research
1) Concepts system: all the parts that we have to build within our team have different concepts.
2) Concepts have skills and a required design team rating (DTR) to develop and build that part's concept. Don't bother about illegal chance, i guess it's something that isn't implemented yet, you can use the best concept you have.
3) Before we develop a part, we have to choose a concept of it. When we start from scratch we only have the "generic" concept of a part that is usually the worst one.
4) In this game the research system consist in invest designer points (hourly or instantly) in a part waiting until our designers discover a new concept of that part.
5) Once every few seasons every part can be resetted when a rules change is announced. Reset mean that every concept unless the generic one is deleted and every players start from scratch again in that part.
6) You can choose if research new concepts for current season or for next season through the switch in the top right of the page, this is useful when there is a rule change.
R&D -> development
1) Like in the research page in the top right you have a switch button where you can choose to build a part for the current season or the next season. When you want to start development the next season's car you have to start from the chassis, and to build a chassis you need to already have a signed contract with an engine supplier.
2) Choose the part you want to develop, then choose the best concept you have of that part.
3) Start the project, if you have more than 1 chassis concept already built, you can choose the chassis concept this part is developing for.
4) You can choose the direction of the development by choosing the skill you want to improve during the development steps.
5) You can also choose if you want a conservative, normal or aggressive development, there are different educated guess here, but nobody know which is the better.
6) Every step can lead to an improving, a "nothing happened" or a set back of the skill you are improving during the development.
7) Not sure here, but the first 6 steps should have no risks to have worst skills than those expected, while after the 7th step the risk should rise a lot.
8) When you finish a project you can also immediately build the new part in the down right of the page.
PERSONNEL -> scouting (Scout staff/drivers)
1) Staff members and drivers have their skills hided when they are in the beginning of their career.
2) Skills can be discovered overtime if staff/drivers partecipate in races, but it's a long process.
3) The fastest and accurate way is to spend scout points when you are on the personal page of the staff/driver you want to scout. Scout points are generated by your scouts in a slowly way so use them wisely.
4) Basically, if you have many scouts with good skills, you have an high scout points production and at the same time you need less points to scout staff/drivers skills.
