Board Thread:Game Discussion/@comment-77.87.242.30-20170112154648/@comment-26829117-20170113111136

It's not that simple RandyMc but it's not that complicated either. Different numbers of people run each stage depending on the cars they have and how upgraded they are. Only people that run all four stages make it into the total numbers. In addition, the total positions are made up of your times for each of the four stages just added together. This means that the different characteristics of each track can skew the results.

Lets assume the following statistics which I've simplified from my current standings:

You can see that the older the stage, the more people run it. To be in group A in stage 1 you have to be in the top 1000, stage 2 the top 600, stage 3 the top 1500 and stage 4 the top 1200. Stage 2 is the current stage. If you look at the totals though you need to be in the top 500 to be in the top 1% or the top 50 to be in the top .1%. Not everyone that has run Stage 2 has run all the other three stages. This means they are not included in the final figures, even if they made group A in stage 2.

You can also see that stage 2 has less impact on the final position because everyone is much closer together. I'm only 0.405s off the fastest time but I'm in group D. If I improved my stage 1 time by just 0.1s it would still leave me with BDBB in each stage but would push me clearly into group B overall.

As RR3G'hamO. has said above there is a much better explanation of this on another thread and I'll try and find it and add this to the FAQ.