F1 2012 Career - 2nd season

[Malarky94]

Hi all,

So I have a question regarding career mode. I recently bought this game because I grew tired of both F1 2013 and 2014. So I wanted to play the last F1 game that still had Schumacher in it.

I started a career mode and picked Caterham to be my first team. I play on Professional difficulty and I had quite realistic results. I would usually qualify between p15-20 and end the races between p10-15.
So far, so good. Had a great first season and managed to beat my rival Michael Schumacher by 2 points. (He had an aweful season in the game for some reason). So I managed to get offered a spot to drive for Mercedes AMG Petronas.

I quickly signed for Mercedes because this was exactly the team I wanted to end up with.
So today, I get home and couldn't wait to drive for Mercedes. But here's the thing..
So I started the 2nd season with Mercedes, and in qualifying in Australia, I am literally 2 seconds behind my teammate Rosberg. I managed to qualify 5th and end the race in p5, but Rosberg won the race and was easily 30 seconds ahead of me.
Now I drove decent laptimes but Rosberg was easily 2-3 seconds faster than me every single lap.

Same thing for Malaysia, where I couldn't qualify higher than 10th, and managed to end the race in p5 once again. This time Rosberg ended in p7, because he had an accident and lost his front wing. But this time it was Kobayashi... He overtook me and I dropped back to 5th. Well, no big deal I thought because he's in a Sauber and I'm in a Mercedes, if I push myself I will catch up to him again.
Well... NO. I pushed as hard as I could and beat my personal best laptimes every single lap, and still he was 2-3 seconds faster than me.

So now, arriving at the Chinese GP. I had enough, and tried to see if the difficulty was simply too high for me, which I doubted in the first place because I did manage to end up in 9th and 7th a few times with Caterham in my 1st season.

Well, yea, I manage a 1.39.xxx in qualifying, and the fastest AI (Perez) only did a 1:43:xxx. So obviously, turning down the difficulty to Intermediate didn't solve anything.

Now I am seriously wondering, yet also slightly dissapointed. Because at first I was SO happy the difficulty seemed quite right for me and to be quite realistic too. But now I am 2 seconds slower than Rosberg, even though we're in the same car.
I use custom set-ups for every race, I am not completely off the pace either I'd say.

So what I am trying to get some advice on is simple.. How the HELL can Rosberg be 2-3 seconds faster than me, even though we're both driving a Mercedes?!
Of course I did not expect to dominate in the Mercedes, but barely managing 10th in qualifying and barely managing to keep Sauber and Williams cars behind me seems a bit unreasonable?

 

[PrettyBoyJack]

Dang this is old so chances of you seeing or caring about this reply are almost non-existent; however, being that I am someone who still plays the crap out of F1 2012, currently playing right now as we speak, I figured why not shoot a reply. So basically if you play the vanilla game without mods it boils down to a few factors that will drastically change your outcome. Tuning is one of them as you already know as indicated in your post; however, as good of a tuning set up as you have, it might not be perfect which is why you should just spend as much time playing and replaying a practice race until you get the tuning down perfect. Aside from tuning, for the actual races you should run your fuel on aggressive and spend your R&D on development for aggressive. During the race you need to use kers out of every corner and on straights and you need to shift your fuel between Mix 2 and Mix 3, Mix 3 for setting fast lap times and overtaking, Mix 2 for maintaining position and Lean if you ever drop in the red until you get back up to orange. Under tuning make sure you are switching to a new fresh engine after every 2.5 to 3 Grand Prixs, engine wear can affect the performance of your vehicle. Always run Option tires at all times unless the race rules require either switching to or finishing the race in Prime tires or the weather forces you on Wet or Intermediate. If you have to finish the race on Prime tires make sure you have at least 15 laps left in the race so you can regain positions as needed, if you don't have to finish the race but need to switch to them at least once, have it set as your first pit stop and keep the laps you have to use them for a bit less than the other pit stops because you want to be back on Option ASAP. That being said, pit stops and pit stop strategy are absolutely crucial and critical to success and can be the difference between starting in third, finishing in 10th or the opposite. I've done it a few times when I was still learning, they really can make a huge difference especially with all rules and flags set to realistic as well as damage set to realistic, tho ofc I prefer the game with mods for even more realism the vanilla game still does a good enough job. Lastly either master driving full manual perfectly with no assists, as this will greatly improve your speed, or if you're like me and hate manual, only have ABS on, traction control set to full and master breaking and cornering with transmission set to auto ofc. The benefit of this set up that I use when I play vanilla is, when you spend enough time on a track you will know how to late break corners and where to cheese certain situations to give yourself an edge and as long as you get it down and become consistent and drive each lap the same way you will be unstoppable. Lastly, this game heavily favors the racing line only allowing deviations for overtakes. If you are not near or at near perfectly following that line going as fast as possible you are gonna lose time and have slower laps. That's really about it, good luck and I hope this helps at least someone somewhere; peace.