Does the Research and Development in F1 2017 Continue on Through Different Contracts

CAREER OVERVIEW

In F1 2017 your progress through Career mode can be divided up neatly into three chunks:

1. Main Career Path - First Season (10 to 12 hours)
2. Main Career Path - Subsequent Seasons (For research and development (R&D) grind - 40 to 50 hours)
3. Alternate Career Partial Paths (For quick achievements - 1.5 to 2 hours)

A feature new to this year's game is the support for multiple career save slots, which means it is possible to work on achievements in alternate career paths without destroying your main career path. Hence, this section of the walkthrough will focus on your main career path first, and if you desire to, you can skip ahead to the alternate careers paths to unlock those fairly quick achievements before returning to the lengthy grind of R&D in the subsequent seasons of your main career path.

Glitched/Problematic Achievement Reminder : From the initial launch of the game through to mid-October 2017, there was a glitch impacting the "Up to eleven " achievement which means it may not have unlocked when expected. If this has happened to you previously, you may wish to use a workaround via Grand Prix mode - this takes less than 30 minutes and is detailed within the Alternate Career Partial Paths section at the bottom of this page.

MAIN CAREER PATH - FIRST SEASON

To get started on your main career path, from the main menu select Career, after which you will be prompted to enter a name for the save game. Be descriptive and meaningful, so use something like "Main Mercedes". Next comes the Driver Creation screen where you set up everything about your driver. All these choices are purely cosmetic, so you don't need to stress over it to much, just pick what appeals. Once finalised, highlight Register Details and select Accept to lock them in. You are now sent back to the main menu and the save and driver you just created are now your defaults.

Again select Career and you will be taken to the Team Select screen. All ten of 2017's participating constructor teams are available to choose, and at the right is a chart of their relative performance expectations. Keep in mind you have a significant dependence on your team mate to earn enough points throughout the first season to secure constructors championship - you cannot do it on your own even if you win every race. To minimise any factors of luck/randomness as much as possible my recommendation here is the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport team. If you have a passionate aversion to joining the "Merc" team, then Scuderia Ferrari is also a reasonably safe option. For any other teams, according to form your AI team mate will at best manage 5th in most races, and random factors will likely mean finishes lower than that in a least a few races. Against teams where both AI drivers are routinely placing between 2nd and 4th behind you, the risk of not winning the constructors championship in your first season is quite high. Taking this into account, select your preferred team and then select your preferred team mate (my recommendations for Mercedes and Ferrari are Hamilton and Vettel respectively) and then select Start Career. This will immediately unlock...

• Great expectations

  Accepted a contract with Red Bull, Ferrari or Mercedes

  

You will now be at the Weekend Structure screen. Similar to Grand Prix mode, there are various session options you can configure in Career mode. Some are locked in place, but of those that you can adjust, none have any impact on the unlocking of career-related achievements. Note also that in Career mode the weather is locked to Dynamic (you can expect rain in at least a few rounds per season) and session start times are locked to Official, meaning they will always match the actual schedule of the 2017 Formula One season.

Configure the Weekend Structure screen as follows:

• Weekend Tyre Allocation > Balanced (Set within sub-menu screen)
• Practice Type > Full Practice
• Practice Length > Short (30 / 30 / 30)
• Qualifying > One-Shot Qualifying
• Formation Lap > Off
• Race Starts > Assisted
• Race One Distance > 5 Laps
• AI Driver Level > 0 (Very Easy)

Configure the Race Settings screen as follows:

• Flashbacks > On
• Parc Ferme Rules > On
• Vehicle Damage > Off
• Safety Car > Off
• Rules and Flags > On
• Corner Cutting Stringency > Regular
• Formation Lap > Off
• Race Starts > Assisted

Configure the Assists screen as follows:

• Driving Proficiency > Custom
• Braking Assist > Off
• Anti-Lock Brakes > On
• Traction Control > Full
• Dynamic Racing Line > Full
• Dynamic Racing Line Type > 3D
• Gearbox > Automatic
• Pit Assist > On
• Pit Release Assist > On

With everything configured as you like, you can now select Advance, after which the session loading screen for Australia - Practice 1 appears.

Your career has just kicked off and the first thing to do is to meet your agent - Emma Jenkins. She will hand over a copy of your contract, explain you are the "second driver" (for now), and tell you about potential invitational events that can give your profile a boost. She sends you on your way back out to the team lounge and you get a "New Contract" notice on screen. Select Continue and then select Laptop and you will get a very brief "Laptop Introduction" notice on screen. Select Continue and have a look around each of the screens and sub-sections. You may find the videos in the Tutorials screen useful, they are short but informative. With some laptop familiarisation complete, now all that's left to do is to get out on track, so select Go To Practice 1.

You will watch some skippable intro footage before finding yourself sitting in you car in the team garage, with 30 minutes on the clock and counting down. Select Session Info to take a closer look at the screen mounted in front of you. Toggle through each of the screens to see what is available to you whenever you are in the garage during any career practice session, then toggle back to the Practice Programme Select screen. Highlight the Fuel Saving programme and read the overview for details of the objective and how to approach driving for best results. This statement in particular is key:

"...you can maximise fuel saving by lifting off the throttle towards the end of long straights and coasting up to the braking zone..."

Which is to say, that you don't need to be conscious of fuel saving for the entire lap. Push hard through corners and shorter straights to ensure a decent lap time, and do a long coast at two or three points when you are at or close to top speed and this should be enough to earn a perfect result. So select this practice programme, you can leave the default options for preferred tyre set, then select Start, then Flying Lap, this will save you some time by putting you out on track near the end of a lap.

On track the game will be controlling your car initially, but will shortly hand over control to you in the same manner you experienced in Time Trial mode. Take the last couple of corners, remember to activate DRS at the start of the straight and begin your first lap of fuel saving. I suggest you try to stick it out for all three available laps if you need to, but you can expect to improve your technique as you progress your career, such that you will normally be able to nail it on your first lap more often than not, especially once you are familiar with the layout of each circuit. Either at the end of the three laps, or if you wish to finish up earlier then you can (open the Pause Menu and select Return to Garage), you will immediately unlock this duo...

• Hard work pays off

  Completed your first Practice Programme

  

• Feed the machine

  Completed a Fuel Management Practice Programme

  

Back in the garage again, you will be shown a review of your performance on the just completed practice programme, with some useful information to help you improve next time. You can run all practice programmes as many times as you like across the three practice sessions, but you will only be credited with a perfect (or if not perfect, then your best) score once per race weekend. Because the clock was running for a little while before you started this practice programme, you may have encountered some traffic along the way. At future race weekends, run the Fuel Saving programme at the very start of a practice session to have a mostly clear track to work with.

In preparation for unlocking of a later achievement, you need to make sure you have set the fastest lap time for this session. With the AI driver level option set in the Very Easy range, this should not be difficult. To confirm this, toggle over to the Timings screen. All drivers are listed in order of their best lap time. If you do not see yourself at the top of the list, you will need to complete some more laps (either as part of another practice programme, or just driving some laps independently by exiting from the screen view, then selecting Go To Track, and Flying Lap). Once you are at the top of the list, check the Gap column for the driver listed below you. If this is about +3.00 seconds or more, you are unlikely to be beaten in the session, but below +2.00 seconds or less you are at risk of losing top spot, because lap times for other driver will improve gradually as the session progresses. You can use the Accelerate Time option (press to cycle through x5, x10, x30 time and back to real-time) to speed this up, and the Timings screen will continue to update with the latest lap times. At any point, when you are comfortably sure you will retain the fastest lap time, toggle over to the End Session screen and select End Session P1, then select Okay to confirm retiring from the session.

You will next see the Results screen with the same list of driver in lap time order. If you were somehow unexpectedly beaten to best lap time, I recommend you select Restart Session so you can ensure that you secure the best lap time before progressing to the second practice session. Assuming you did secure top spot as planned, select Advance to end the session.

The next milestone in your very young career is to meet Chris, your team's head of Research and Development (R&D). He will give you an introduction to how R&D works, and prepare you for the fact that sometimes tests will fail and cost extra resources to finally bring the new upgrade to fruition. You take a seat at your laptop in the R&D trailer and are introduced to the concept of resource points (RP) - essentially the form of currency in Career mode that you earn through practice programmes, qualifying sessions and races themselves, and that you spend on R&D towards upgrades for your car. You are given an initial allocation of 3500RP to kick-start R&D for your first season, and this is summed together with your RP earnings from the first practice session you just completed.

Open your laptop again and you will be presented with the new R&D screen, within which you can drive the direction that R&D takes in terms of upgrades, as well as monitor both current and historical progress. You also see how your team is progressing compared to the other nine constructors, which in itself is a reasonable indicator of how typical race results might play out. Select View R&D Tree and you will see a high-level view of all upgrades that you can work towards over the course of your career, as below. [Click the image to enlarge]

When viewing the R&D Tree you can select Recommend Upgrade at any time and the game will highlight a good choice for what to upgrade next. There is an achievement you can unlock the first time you choose to develop a recommended upgrade, however, consider this:

Prioritise RP Spending on Efficiency and Quality Control Upgrades: For three of the departments - Chassis, Powertrain, and Aerodynamics, there are five efficiency upgrades that can be instantly unlocked through spending of RP, and these reduce the cost of all other upgrades in the same department by 10% at a time, up to a maximum of 50% cost reduction. Purchasing all efficiency upgrades in each of these departments before any car upgrades in the same department is definitely beneficial, and is the most economical way to reduce the overall total RP you need to earn in order to eventually have 75% of the vehicle upgrades applied.

These same departments also have five quality control upgrades that can be instantly unlocked through spending of RP, and these reduce the chance of upgrades failing by 7.5% at a time, up to a maximum of 37.5% chance reduction. While the benefits are not easily observable with failures occurring somewhat at random, they are fairly inexpensive and should pay for themselves in RP savings due to reduced failures through the course of upgrading the department most of the way if not fully. NOTE: Some detailed analysis on Reddit suggests you get best value by buying just the first two quality control upgrades: [SOLUTION] The optimal strategy to spending resource points in F1 2017: A numerical simulation (by /u/NevCee)

The first recommended upgrade costs 1000RP (the Front Wing Main Plane upgrade in the Aerodynamics department) but, as per the above, this could be reduced to 500RP and thus a net saving of 500RP overall if you wait until after you have purchased the five efficiency upgrades for aerodynamics. 500RP is roughly equivalent to what you would earn in a single race weekend where you complete all practice programmes perfectly, qualify on pole, and win the race.

If you wait, then you can purchase this recommended upgrade at half price by about the halfway point of your first season, perhaps a little earlier. If you want to unlock the achievement now at the cost of a bit of extra grinding later on, then from the R&D tree view, select Recommend Upgrade then select Develop, then select Develop Upgrade to confirm and you will unlock...

• Chris knows best

  Researched a recommended upgrade

  

In preparation for a future achievement that will unlock well into your second career season, from now on you should focus all your spending within the R&D tree on the Powertrain Department - it has the fewest upgrades of the three applicable departments and thus requires the least amount of RP to be fully upgraded.

After the R&D introduction it is time for more practice, so from back at your main laptop screen, select Go To Practice 2, and once loaded you'll again be back in the car in the garage. Select Session Info and on the Practice Programme Select screen you will observe that all the progress you made in P1 has been retained. Highlight the Race Strategy programme and read the overview for some pointers, then select it, stick with the default tyre options, select Start , then Flying Lap , and you'll be out on track again.

Against the slow AI drivers, the Race Strategy programme is pretty easy to perfect and earn the maximum of 50RP. You don't need to be especially smooth or efficient, just get around the track as quickly as you can without any incidents (recover via flashbacks if needed) and post laps quicker than the target shown at the top right of screen. If you do so on you first three laps, that will be enough for an "Optimal Pace" result, and also a perfect result achievement-wise, so open the Pause Menu and select Return to Garage . This will immediately unlock these two...

• Practically perfect

  Achieved a perfect result in a Practice Programme

  

• It's a marathon, not a sprint

  Completed a Race Strategy Practice Programme

  

From the garage, as per your previous practice session, again monitor the lap times of other drivers versus your own, and do some more laps to improve your own time and stay ahead if need be. When you know your time is a lock for fastest of the session, toggle over to the End Session screen and select End Session P2 , then select Okay to confirm, and again review the Results screen to ensure top spot, before selecting Advance to move on. You'll be presented with a summary of RP earned in the session just completed (most likely in the vicinity of 80-90RP), and select Continue from here to end up back at your laptop. Nothing else required here other than to open it up and select Go To Practice 3.

In your third and final practice session of the race weekend, your only goal is to again end up with the fastest lap time at the end of the session. You should easily take care of this while trying the three remaining practice programmes you are yet to experience:

• Track Acclimatisation
• Tyre Management
• Qualifying Pace

Track Acclimatisation is the least forgiving of all programmes - you need to stick to near-perfect track position while still maintaining fast pace. The dynamic racing line is a good guide to follow of course. You should always run this programme at the very start of a practice session while the track is still empty. Being faster than the AI drivers will mean that you have to drive around them and this make perfect scores far more difficult, so start early to minimise any traffic. Because of its relative difficulty versus the other programmes, I suggest you save this one up for Practice 3 so you have a few laps already down at the current circuit before you try this programme.

Tyre Management is not too problematic to perfect, but having the track to yourself does help, so as a rule, tackle this one at the start of either Practice 1 or Practice 2. Another key statement to observe from the overview:

"...you can extend the life of the tyre by being less aggressive on the steering wheel in high speed corners, and the throttle on the exit of tight corners..."

Meaning, slowly and smoothly increase the angle into a turn, and slowly and smoothly release the angle out of the turn, and when applying throttle be gentle initially and save full throttle for when your heading has straightened out again.

Qualifying Pace is the quickest and easiest way you will earn 50RP all game, you don't need to be elegant about it, just faster than the AI - you will not struggle at all with this one.

As you progress through the rest of your career, you will gain a good feel for what are your preferred programmes to focus on, and some of them you may wish to forgo if the rate at which they earn you RP is too low for your liking. Don't give up too early or easily though, because perfecting them helps your career R&D progress.

Earn Perfect Scores on as Many Practice Programmes as Possible - Improves Simultaneous Development Core Competency : Aside from the obvious benefit of maximising RP earnings, every practice programme completed with a perfect score progresses you towards increasing the number of upgrades that can be worked on in parallel per department. With totals of 15, 50 and 100 perfect practice programmes completed, you gain the ability to work in parallel on two, three and unlimited upgrades respectively. Note that there are 100 practice programmes in total on offer in each full season, so you could have unlimited upgrades running in parallel from the start of your second season if you perfect them all every race weekend from the start of your career.

Also take a look at Team Objectives within the Practice Programme Select screen. This is a set of five additional RP earners that are of small value on their own, but can potentially contribute a few hundred RP over the course of a season. You will likely get half of them on average without even thinking about them.

Wrap up this P3 session as soon as you are ready, of course ensuring you have the fastest lap time safely tucked away as you do. For future reference, where you select the End Session P1/P2/P3 option, note that you can also select Advance To Qualifying from any practice session if you want to streamline your career progress slightly.

Post-P3 you'll be paid some more RP and then Emma will introduce you to the concept of Driver Rivalry - basically a head-to-head battle against another driver, either your team mate (always your first rival) or a championship contender from another team. There are no achievements tied to rivalries in this year's game, so you don't need to pay much attention to them. You will win them consistently and easily just by qualifying on pole and winning races.

With your new rival assigned, back at your laptop desk you now have a new option - Listen To Voicemail. Select it and this will reveal your qualifying goals - they do not change between race weekends - your first goal is always a target grid position to meet or exceed, and your second goal is always to beat your current rival. Select Continue, open up your laptop and select Go To One-Shot Qualifying. You session loads and rolls some skippable intro footage, after which you land on the Tyre Select screen. Leave everything here as default, you will have the appropriate tyres fitted to match the weather conditions, and select Go To Track.

Out on track, the one-shot qualifying format drops you mere seconds away from the start/finish line that is rapidly approaching, so be ready to take over. Following your practice sessions you should be familiar enough with the circuit to reliably put down a lap faster than the rest of the field. If you are not fastest to that point of the circuit, then you will see a ghost of the driver that is currently fastest ahead of you. The circuit mini-map at the lower left also shows your position relative to the fastest driver apart from yourself - you are a yellow dot and the other driver is a smaller grey dot, or a green dot if it's your team mate. [Click the image to enlarge]

Make sure you are ahead at the end of the lap when it matters, but pole position or not, as soon as you complete your qualifying lap, and as long as you did not tweak your Fuel Mix setting away from the [4] MAX setting mid-lap (which is almost impossible to do accidentally), you will unlock...

• Setting up

  Completed a valid qualifying lap using the maximum fuel setting

  

Next review your final grid position on the Results screen. If you did not land pole position, then select Restart Session and make things good, but otherwise select Advance and on the loading screen you will unlock...

• Best Seat In The House

  Took pole position

  

Back in the lounge, you will collect your RP earnings according to your performance in qualifying, get an update on your rivalry and an update of your team approval. Your approval will go up or down depending on whether you meet the goals set for you in qualifying and race sessions. To safely unlock an achievement near the end of your first season, make sure you always qualify on pole and win every race. Together with your own team's approval, you can see how your reputation is sitting with other constructor teams. Build enough of a reputation and later in your career you will receive offers to drive with them, but let me emphasise this now - you want to stick with your chosen team until all achievements on your main career path are unlocked, switching early will set back your progress significantly in terms of R&D/upgrades. Select Continue to progress.

The next session is the race itself, and you have more goals set for you. Select Listen To Voicemail to find out what they are. Like qualifying, these also do not change between race weekend. You have two goals for the race itself - a finish position to meet or exceed, and to beat your current rival, and you have a third goal that relates to your overall position in the drivers championship - a minimum place to meet or exceed. Make sure that you win every race and these goals will take care of themselves. Select Continue, then open your laptop and select Go To Race.

Your race session loads and some informative footage rolls (always skippable) of the circuit and a brief spiel on the brand new car specifications after the formula rules were changed up for the 2017 season. At the conclusion of that you are on the grid in pole position. if you wish, you can select Car Setup for a look purely out of interest, but it is safe to ignore entirely throughout your career. Otherwise, get down to the business of the race and select Start Race.

The lights overhead fill up one by one, and once they are all glowing red, after a short but random interval they will go out and you can speed away. You may find the other drivers get the jump on you off the starting line and a one or two may get slightly ahead. Don't let this trouble you, because they also tend to be a lot more cautious braking into the first corner than you need to be. This means that often you will be able to jump back into the lead by braking later. Above all, try to avoid any collisions, because you have five whole laps to gradually work your way back into the lead. As always, you can use flashbacks to undo any big mistakes, and reuse of a mid-session save is an option to progressively secure your race progress if you find any particular race extra challenging, perhaps when the dynamic weather system has gifted you some heavy rain.

Get through the five laps to take the win, after which you'll hear some kind congratulations over the radio, followed by some pit wall and podium celebration scenes (again these are skippable) and you will eventually end up at the Results screen. If some disaster caused you to finish 2nd or worse, select the Restart Session option from here and grab the win on your next attempt. For future reference, on this same screen you can select Standings and review the current standings in both the Drivers' and Constructors' Championships. After the first race of the season these will align exactly with the race results, but they will become more meaningful the further you progress through each season. With the win secured, and having taken due care in practice and qualifying earlier, select Advance to unlock...

• Top that!

  Set the fastest time in all 3 Practice sessions, took pole position and won the Grand Prix

  

• First of many?

  Took your first win in any full season

  

After the race you'll go through the now familiar motions of RP earnings, rivalry updates and team approval updates. Then you will be introduced to Career Score, which is calculated based on your performance and various modifiers applied according to the team you are driving with, the AI driver level and the combination of driving assists you use (or don't use). You can safely ignore this entirely unless you want to compare with your friends. From your Career Score screen, select Continue.

You will arrive back into a non-skippable cutscene with Emma introducing you to Jonathan, an entrepreneur type who wants you to represent him in various Invitational Events using classic cars from past eras of Formula One. Completion of these events is beneficial to your career R&D progress.

Complete Invitational Events When Offered - Improves Upgrade Speed Core Competency : Throughout your career seasons, you can participate in an Invitational Event after your first race weekend, and then after every three race weekends thereafter. With totals of 3, 10 and 20 completed events, you will be rewarded with halving of the required development time for minor (2 weeks down to 1), major (4 weeks down to 2) and ultimate (6 weeks down to 3) upgrades respectively. This means you'll be able to develop upgrades in half the time and move onto the next one sooner, provided you have enough RP to spend on a new upgrade of course. Note that while you are offered two choices each time, and that the event you do not complete in between career race weekends becomes unlocked within the Championships menu under the main menu, completing it successfully via the Championships menu will not count in your career. This means the earliest you will have all 20 events complete and receive full benefits is just slightly into your fourth career season.

After your brief meeting with Jonathan and Emma concludes you are presented with your initial two choices. Both are quite easy (my recommendation is Overtake Challenge - Britain Short), so highlight your preference and select Accept after which you will unlock...

• Invite only

  Accepted an invite to an Invitational event

  

Before actually participating in your selected Invitational Event, the game leaves you back at the team lounge - post-race at your first race weekend. This "in between" time is best to open up your laptop and review and direct R&D progress because with some more RP earned and/or upgrades completed in the weekend prior, any new upgrade you commence has the benefit of having the pending race weekend counting as a full weekend towards development time. You will have a similar opportunity prior to Practice 1 in each race weekend also, so take advantage of these opportunities regularly to avoid any unfortunate delays you would encounter if you were to make R&D decisions mid-weekend. As a general rule, it is wiser to save your R&D planning for the start of a new race weekend because this comes after any updates from Chris about successes or failures for R&D that has just concluded. Experiencing at least a few failures along the way is inevitable, but the RP invested is not totally lost, instead it will take a smaller amount of RP and an extra race weekend to complete R&D on the failed component. In contrast, successful R&D will likely open up new components that were previously blocked by their predecessors in the tree.

There is no benefit to building up a stockpile of RP, so aim to spend it as you earn it. I recommend you spend your remaining balance of RP now on the Powertrain Department efficiency upgrades, you should have enough for three of them, possibly even the fourth too if you did not spend 1000RP on the recommended upgrade earlier.

Having completed your R&D activities but with the laptop remaining open, select Go To Invitational Event to start the session loading. After some skippable introductory footage plays, you will see on screen the specifics of the goal you need to meet and the car, circuit and time or lap limit involved. From here, select Continue when you are ready to start.

Work towards the event goal, your target and progress so far are displayed at the top right of screen. While you may meet or exceed the target significantly earlier than required, you still need to complete the full driving duration or number of laps and remain ahead of the goal at the end of the event for it be counted as successful. At the Invitational Results screen you will get confirmation of meeting the goal set for you (or select Restart Session for another attempt if you missed the goal), and then you can select Advance and during the loading screen you will unlock...

• Blast from the past

  Completed an Invitational event

  

The game immediately takes you to into Round 2 China, and by this stage you will be well settled into the Formula One groove and you know most of what to expect. Use the below "to-do list" as a template for each race weekend, and if necessary adjust it to your liking however you see fit:

• Start Weekend > Review any R&D results and commence new upgrades as you are able to afford them
• Practice 1 > Immediate Tyre Management, then Race Strategy, then retire from session
• Practice 2 > Immediate Fuel Saving, then Qualifying Pace, then retire from session
• Practice 3 > Immediate Track Acclimatisation, then retire from session
• One-Shot Qualifying > Pole Position
• Race > Win
• Before Next Weekend > Swap out worn power unit components and gearboxes as appropriate (this is covered in more detail below for the next achievement)
• Invitational Events (as applicable) > Enter your preferred event, complete it in full having met the objective

Complete China, followed by Bahrain, then Russia, doing your best to perfect as many practice programmes as you can, qualify on pole, and win the race. Review R&D at the start of each weekend and continue developing the Powertrain upgrades as your earnings allow. After Russia you can complete your second Invitational Event, then complete Round 5 in Spain. You will see that your team approval is now in the purple "exceeding expectations" level, and maintaining it at the highest level from here will earn another achievement near season's end.

After anywhere between three and five races some, if not all, of your vehicle components will have significant wear. Your race engineer will comment on the wear as it begins to become problematic, and if you neglect things for too long you will get more serious symptoms such as a lack of power and skipping of gears. To keep all this under control, open your laptop, toggle to the Vehicle Management screen, and view the Power Unit section within. Your power unit is built from six components and these all wear out at their own rate depending on various factors, including car setup and your driving style. You have four of each component that combined should ideally last you a full season of 20 race weekends. By default unit 1 of 4 is currently in use for all six components. Find the one which is most worn so far. The colour of the boxes are an indication - green is still quite low wear, yellow is moderate wear, and anything tending towards red needs instant replacement, but the most accurate measure is to highlight each of the six units in use and compare the percentage in Track time/wear shown towards the right of screen. For whichever component is most worn, highlight Unit 2 of 4 and then select Fit Component and then select Okay to confirm. By swapping out this worn component you will immediately unlock...

• Out with the old

  Switched out a worn engine part

  

The most worn component you just replaced is also the one you are at the greatest risk of wearing out all four units before season's end. Thus, while here you should highlight the box containing the plus + symbol and again select Fit Component. The game will warn you about a grid drop penalty if you proceed, because you will have ordered a fifth unit which goes beyond the four units allowed in the Formula One rules. Also, for peace of mind note that any grid drop penalty is applied after completion of qualifying, and so does not impact on your qualifying position compared to your teammate in any way, even if the penalty means you start behind them on the grid come the race session. Select Okay to confirm this and you will unlock...

• Down but not out

  Took a grid drop penalty for switching an engine part

  

To simplify proceedings for the remainder of the season, now swap back to Unit 2 of 4 of your most worn component, and also swap to Unit 2 of 4 for any of the other five components that have approximately 75% wear or greater. Make a habit of checking this wear at least once per race weekend and replace with new components as needed. This keeps you running with components in reasonable condition all season long, and as your season nears its end it is better to take a grid drop penalty proactively than pushing the wear to near 100% and risk serious and sudden consequences while driving out on track.

Still in the Vehicle Management screen, toggle over to the Gearbox section. You will see that you have an allocation of four gearboxes that you need to make last for the whole season, but the rules regarding their use are more restrictive than for the components in the power unit. You need to use your currently fitted gearbox unit for a minimum of six race weekend before you can replace it with the next unit without a penalty. If you ever replace a unit having only used it in five or fewer race weekends, you will incur a grid drop penalty as punishment, but do so if you must - again this is better than risking the consequences of a fully worn gearbox. Once your current gearbox has been used for six races, you will be reminded at the start of the next race weekend that a new gearbox can be fitted without triggering a penalty. Select Yes at this prompt and it will be done automatically for you, but otherwise you can take care of it yourself via this screen.

From here continue on through Rounds 6 to 10 of the season with the exact same approach. Then at Round 11 in Hungary, select Advance from the Results screen after qualifying on pole and you will unlock...

• Up to eleven

  Out qualified your team mate 11 times in one season

  

Continue on to victory at Hungary. While it may vary due to the team you are driving for and possibly other unknown or random factors, it is at around this point of the season when back in the team lounge you will be visited by Emma for a Contract Event - Promotion to the 1st Driver Position. As the cutscene begins to play you will unlock...

• The right person for the job

  Received a promotion to first driver

  

You'll now get a small but steadily increasing boost to your RP earnings accordingly, which is beneficial to your career R&D progress.

Stay Loyal to Your Team as Their 1st Driver - Improves First Driver Bonus Core Competency : Now that you hold the 1st Driver position, from this race on your will earn extra RP paid out at the end of each race weekend. Beginning with a 5% bonus, this then increases to 10% after 20 races, and tops out at 15% after 60 races, which is a whole three seasons, so stick with you team to realise this benefit to its maximum potential and keep the upgrades flowing faster.

Following the established pattern, push on through Rounds 12 to 15. Somewhere in the vicinity of your Round 15 win in Malaysia, you will have built an unassailable lead in the Drivers' Championship. It may come in an earlier or later round depending on how far ahead of the 2nd place driver you are, but if you monitor the Standings screen available after each race you will be able to predict when it is due. From the Results screen after whichever race this is, select Advance and you will unlock...

• Top of the pile

  Won the Formula 1 Drivers' Championship

  

  

Complete another two races, Rounds 16 to 17, and by roughly this stage of the season the combined points earned by you and your team mate will be enough to secure victory in the Constructors' Championship. Again it may come earlier or later depending on how close the 2nd place team is, but after the race at which it is secure, from the Results screen select Advance and you will unlock...

• It's a team sport

  Won the Formula 1 Constructors' Championship

  

With another pair of races done, Rounds 18 and 19, this will be a cumulative 15 rounds of the season that you have been exceeding the expectations of your team after you first reached that level in Round 5 at Spain. 15 rounds of 20 rounds total, which makes for 75% of the season. That's why, on the post-race Results screen for Mexico, you can select Advance to unlock...

• Underestimated

  Spent at least 75% of a season being rated as 'Overachieving' by your team

  

Now you are up to the last race of the season, Round 20 in Abu Dhabi. After another routine pole position and race victory, from the Results screen select Advance to unlock...

• Seasoned Veteran

  Completed a Full Season of 20 Races in Career or Championships

  

At the conclusion of your victorious season, you will be rewarded with a resource points bonus of approximately 1000RP, and an "End of Season" message from your team congratulating you on a job well done. That's not quite the end of the season though, because of your dominant performance you will receive a flood of contract offers from other teams, and a renewal contract with your own team. Switching teams at this stage of your career will only do you achievement progress a big disservice - you will only be offered the 2nd Driver position, and the other teams will likely be a backwards step for you in terms of R&D progress too. So on this Switch Team screen make sure you select the Stay As 1st Driver contract offer from your current team and you will be able to pick up everything in your second season from just where you left it.

Back to your laptop, you can now bask in the glory of a perfect Trophy Room screen and review any of the other content you wish to. Select Next Season and you will be shown a Career Season 1 Complete screen with a summary snapshot of the season just gone. You can then select Continue to load into your second season and you'll get a "Welcome Back" message from your team.

MAIN CAREER PATH - SUBSEQUENT SEASONS

Glitched/Problematic Achievement Reminder : There is a possible glitch impacting the "On the shoulders of giants " achievement which means it may not unlock when expected. Exactly what is encompassed by the "75% of the vehicle upgrades" mentioned in the achievement description is unknown, so you may need to keep grinding and applying further upgrades for it to eventually unlock .

From this second career season on, your approach can be entirely standardised, with the main goal being earning and spending RP as quickly and efficiently as possible, and so part of this entails continuing to work on maximising the three core competencies that contribute to this endeavour. You can monitor progress via your laptop - go into the Research and Development screen, then select View R&D Tree, then highlight any of the diagonal branches and select More Information. Here you see all competencies summarised together, and can easily evaluate your progress overall and how close to the next improvement your are for each one.

Continue with the same approach for each race weekend as you established during your first season. However, now that the pressure is off having already won both the Drivers' and Constructors' Championships, it is safe to take a bit of a risk of losing the occasional race in order to save time overall, via the partial simulation of each race. For your race session, starting from pole position as usual, build up as big a lead as you can on the first lap, you should be able to manage a lead of somewhere in the vicinity of 7-8 seconds. Once you are across the start/finish line and into the second lap, from the Pause Menu, toggle across to Manage Session, then select Simulate Session, then Okay to confirm. The session will end as per usual, and in the vast majority of cases, you will discover at the Results screen that you have held onto your lead during the simulation and still won the race. You will have likely earned 55RP for driving just one lap, as opposed to the typical 100RP for a race driven in full. This sacrifices 45RP in earnings for a saving of 4 laps and 5-8 minutes (depending on lap length) of your gaming time, which can be better spent earning RP at a faster rate during practice and qualifying sessions of the next race weekend.

If you manage on average four perfect practice programmes per race weekend, after Round 5 of your second season you will have completed 100 practice programmes perfectly. For an average of three, the 100 will come up at around Round 14 of your second season. At either point, this will mean you can now have an unlimited number of upgrades in development at once.

With all your RP spending focused on the Powertrain department, towards the end of this second season you will have purchased all upgrades, and at the start of the race weekend for which the last of them has been developed successfully and fitted to your car, you will unlock...

• Some assembly required

  Applied all vehicle upgrades from one department

  

You can now diversify your RP spending across the remaining Aerodynamics, Chassis, and Durability departments, ensuring you buy all efficiency upgrades and your intended number of quality control upgrades first (not applicable for the Durability department), then buy the upgrades along the various branches in order of size/price, generally buying cheapest first for as long as you can. There is one caveat here - in the Aerodynamics and Chassis departments, there are some minor upgrades only accessible after one major upgrade is purchased to open up the branch on the development tree. I suggest this is worth doing to help keep all four departments at roughly the same percentage of overall development progress in case it plays a factor in the achievement unlocking.

With three seasons complete, you will have had the opportunity to participate in 20 Invitational Events, and so you will have halved the development time of all upgrade sizes. Then at about halfway through season four, you will have held the first driver position for 60 races with your team, and will start to earn the full 15% bonus RP thereafter. This means you now have all the core competencies that are relevant to R&D at their maximum level.

Because some gamers are having a different experience from others with the point of unlocking of this achievement, there is a lack of clarity about what entails 75% of vehicle upgrades. There is also the possibility that the unlock requirements were changed with one of the early game patches (although none of the release notes have suggested this) - if it did happen, this would add to the confusion. The best you can do is follow along with the Overall Development Progress section within the Research and Development screen in your laptop. [Click the image to enlarge]

Once you have exhausted all remaining minor upgrades, move on to focus on the major upgrades, and then finally the ultimate upgrades. If you are in the unfortunate circumstance that at this point the achievement still has not unlocked, you can try the following:

• Work on the Pit Stop Efficiency core competency - sacrifice race wins and instead request a pit stop on every lap to develop it quickly
• Purchase any remaining Quality Control upgrades

At some point along the way as described above, you will have an upgrade applied at the start of a race weekend that will finally unlock...

• On the shoulders of giants

  Had 75% of the vehicle upgrades applied

  

ALTERNATE CAREER PARTIAL PATHS

To tidy up those achievements that can't be readily unlocked on you main career path, you can unlock them in pretty quick time by starting a new career for each of them. Because you already have a career save that is loaded by default, commencing any extra careers is a little different this time around. From the main menu, highlight rather than select Career, and then select Manage Drivers. You will see your main career path save in the top slot. Highlight the next empty slot and select Options, and then select New Career. Give it a name and then create a new driver, you can rush through it because this career serves no purpose beyond the next achievement. With all the details entered, select Accept and you will be returned to the main menu. Your new career save is now the default, so select Career and you will proceed to the Team Select screen. Highlight and select either of the following teams:

• McLaren-Honda Formula One Team
• Sauber F1 Team

And then leave your team mate as the default and select Start Career to immediately unlock...

• Something to prove

  Accepted a contract with McLaren or Sauber

  

Select Start Session once loading is complete, and then once the cut scene where you meet Emma begins, hit then toggle over to Manage Session and select Quit To Main Menu. and then Okay to confirm. Start off another new career as you have just done, but this time select a team from the following list:

• Williams Racing
• Sahara Force India Formula One Team
• Renault Sport Formula One Team
• Scuderia Toro Rosso
• Haas F1 Team

Like before, when you select Start Career you will immediately unlock...

• Contender

  Accepted a contract with Williams, Force India, Renault, Toro Rosso or Haas

  

Once more, quit back to the main menu as soon as you are able. This final achievement in Career mode needs you to start another new career and sabotage your initial performance until you are at risk of being fired, after which you then recover with a drastic performance improvement. The timeframe in which this can be completed varies from team to team, but the quickest known way is to join Red Bull Racing and progress through the first five race weekends of your first season following a very precise set of steps. So, set up a new career save and join Red Bull Racing to get started. There is no use participating in any practice sessions, so retire immediately from Practice 1 via the Advance To Qualifying option every time. When it comes to Qualifying and Race sessions, progress through the race weekends exactly as listed below:

• Round 1 Australia - Retire from Qualifying, retire from Race
• Round 2 China - Pole position in Qualifying, retire from Race
• Round 3 Bahrain - Pole position in Qualifying, retire from Race
• Contract Event - Written Warning ("...not reaching the expected team goals...")
• Round 4 Russia - Pole position in Qualifying, win the Race
• Round 5 Spain - Pole position in Qualifying, win the Race

From the Results screen shown after your race victory in Spain, select Advance and you will unlock...

• Back up to speed

  Improved your performance to elevate yourself out of the 'Underachieving' zone

  

Glitched Achievement Workaround : The below covers the workaround for a glitched " Up to eleven " achievement - please ignore this if you have already unlocked it.

From the main menu select Grand Prix, then for Era select select Modern F1 Cars, then Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport for team, and lastly Lewis Hamilton for driver. On the Track Select screen, set up a season of 11 rounds using the Japan Short circuit for every round - this is shortest circuit in the entire game. Select Advance, then adjust the settings as outlined below.

Configure the Weekend Structure screen as follows:

• Weekend Tyre Allocation > Balanced (Set within sub-menu screen)
• Practice Type > None
• Practice Length > None
• Qualifying > One-shot Qualifying
• Formation Lap > Off
• Race Starts > Assisted
• Race One Distance > 3 Laps
• AI Driver Level > 0 (Very Easy)

Configure the Race Settings screen as follows:

• Flashbacks > On
• Parc Ferme Rules > Off
• Vehicle Damage > Off
• Safety Car > Off
• Rules and Flags > Off
• Corner Cutting Stringency > Regular
• Formation Lap > Off
• Race Starts > Assisted

Configure the Assists screen as follows:

• Driving Proficiency > Custom
• Braking Assist > Off
• Anti-Lock Brakes > On
• Traction Control > Full
• Dynamic Racing Line > Full
• Dynamic Racing Line Type > 3D
• Gearbox > Automatic
• Pit Assist > On
• Pit Release Assist > On

Configure the Weather & Time of Day screen as follows:

• Quick Weather > Clear
• Session Start Time > Midday

Now select Advance to load one-shot qualifying for Round 1. Skip through the introduction footage and then select Go To Track. Put in a good qualifying lap and use flashbacks to fix any mistakes that might jeopardise your time. At the Results screen, ensure you have ended up in pole position, or at the very least, ahead of your team mate (Valtteri Bottas for Mercedes) - anything under 40 seconds should generally be good enough. If not, then select Restart Session, otherwise select Advance to load the race session. Skip through some more introduction footage to get to the starting grid, then select Start Race. After the lights go out, bring up the Pause Menu and toggle across to the Manage Session screen, then select Retire from Session, and then Okay to confirm. You will pull off to the side of the track and the podium celebrations will ensue. Skip ahead to the Results screen and select Advance to load one-shot qualifying for Round 2.

Repeat this process for every round. Unlike in Career mode, in Grand Prix mode you cannot be fired from your team for poor performance, so just put in your fast qualifying laps and skip all those races. After 25 to 30 minutes, you will have completed your qualifying lap for Round 11. From the Results screen, select Advance and you will unlock...

• Up to eleven

  Out qualified your team mate 11 times in one season

  

Find anything you think is wrong with this walkthrough? Help us fix it by posting in its Walkthrough Thread.

This walkthrough is the property of TrueAchievements.com. This walkthrough and any content included may not be reproduced without written permission. TrueAchievements.com and its users have no affiliation with any of this game's creators or copyright holders and any trademarks used herein belong to their respective owners.

boothbyfrund1974.blogspot.com

Source: https://www.trueachievements.com/game/F1-2017/walkthrough/4

Share this post