I'm in the process of creating early F1 turbo era seasons and I want to make them as authentic as possible. That means a lot of retirements. This is a take from my 1982 season. Only SimDream cars are available. They were useless in their default form. Way too slow on races. I removed all their other tires except for QF supersoft and they became very competitive.
I play with Williams 1982 Cosworth / K.Rosberg who won the championship that year with heroic drives- and with consistency and reliability against much faster turbo cars. I made my car turbo-less from data (or gave it much smaller boost) but increased the turbo damage value so it doesn't break.
Renault, Ferrari and Brabham had 1.5 turbos with huge power but they were very unreliable.
Renault/Prost had 8 retirements in 1982
Renault/ Arnoux had 10
Brabham/Patrese had 10
Piquet 11 DNF's / DNQ's
Pironi's and Villeneuve's season we all know how sadly it ended for both
Toleman's Fabi didn't finish even one race that season.
These seasons are not realistic at all if Cosworths have the same power and the turbos won't break. Guess what... now they DO break. But not in every race. This is Imola with a long top speed straight. Half of the cars retired.
My starting grid was 11th and ended up 3rd.
All retirements are ai engine failures.
Now the turbos last well on tracks like Long Beach, Monaco and even Dijon and Caesars Palace. But break on fast tracks like Hockenheim, Kyalami, Monza, Imola, Paul Ricard. Prost/Piquet at ai level 100 and Ferraris at 95'ish are superior on those tracks with the turbo engines. If you want to keep them behind you with the Cosworth, you can't have them close on your tail on the straights. You can fight for the championship with podium / points finishes and still have a chance to win on the street circuits (like Rosberg did with the inferior car).
I've been adjusting the 1982, 1983 and 1984 years for a long time. Looks pretty good.
PS: Look at Renault Turbo Prost's best lap time and compare it my Cosworth best lap time. That was pretty much the genuine difference on Monza, Imola and Hockenheim 1982.