Board Thread:Game Discussion/@comment-27728287-20160301172039/@comment-26715739-20160302160725

RomGuyony wrote: I still stand by my theory that there are at least two variables involved (distance and performance of the cars), whether it's an automatic calculation or FM set the numbers themselves. There's more to it, but it's hypothetical and not worth going into. Yep, every time I try to play with the numbers to draw out some "underlying truth" I end up throwing in the towel.

I've pretty much decided that someone at FM has come up with same painfully complex formula -of which they're no doubt inordinately proud - which involves lots of different variables (career stage, bonus/career series modifier, maximum car PR for the race, required PR, per lap baseline value for the track) used in multi-part calculations which are mixed with severe rounding/truncation (to 10s or 100s) at several points such that most of the complexity of the calculation is actually lost in that rounding (most of the time). As you say, not really worth trying to second guess how they do it.

But I guess this discussion is about spit-balling ways they could do it better...