The problem with backmarkers comes because in my seasons I had to make the individual car/driver differences significant.
Take the 1998 F1 season (or pretty much any other F1 season). You usually have two top drivers fighting for the title. Well last year we had three, in 2007 we had three... but generally there are pairings like Hakkinen/Schumacher and Verstappen/Hamilton, Senna/Prost etc. and their wingmen (Bottas/Barrichello/Berger etc).
That means you have to give these top drivers considerably better AI skill.
Let's take 1998 season (only two base cars).
Hakkinen/Schumacher AI 100
then they have their "wingmen" Irvine/Coulthard AI 94
Rest of the grid has to be 93-89 in order to get authentic and realistic QF results. Anything below 89 is just way too slow.
Okay now you have pretty dramatic speed differences which means the 89 rated drivers will become backmarkers pretty quick. Usually around laps 14-15. AC doesn't have the blue flag AI but you still can handle the overtakes because you have faster car (if you're careful).
But when you have longer races you will get tons of backmarkers and there's ALWAYS that certain amount of randomness when they pit (even with my fuel manipulation system).
This all could have been very easy to solve if you could have "max/min pitstops per race" or "max/min tyre compounds to use" adjustments. But there is none. That is also why we can't really make decent modern post-DRS F1 seasons. Lack of options to use.
I think you COULD get rid of most of the backmarker issues if you rate all drivers at AI skill 100. But then you will get random results.
The way I executed the pitstop and fuel thing was that I simply did the qualifying, went to the race and parked my car next to the pitlane and watched when AI started to pit. I had set 20 lap race so my goal was to get them pitting at lap 10-12. If they pitted earlier, I simply increased their starting/max fuel amount.
