Ok, I've been plagued by this problem from day one and still no closer to figuring out why. Does anyone know why in most races there will be cars that pit more than they need to? It throws up the most stupidly unrealistic results. Every race there will be between one and four drivers from the top teams (McLaren, Red Bull, Ferarri etc.) ending up between 15th and last just because they make more pitstops than they need to. Why the hell does this happen?
I've even edited the tyre distances in the database file by increasing the distance all compounds (except Inter and Monsoon) can run by 20 and it still happens. Say a 30% race of Bahrain is 15 laps, the Primes can go 12 laps distance and the Options 6 laps. Obviously they have to run each compound at least once but even the most simple minded person can see you don't need to make more than the one mandatory pitstop, so why does this happen every race? It completely ruins the game for me.
I've even edited the tyre distances in the database file by increasing the distance all compounds (except Inter and Monsoon) can run by 20 and it still happens. Say a 30% race of Bahrain is 15 laps, the Primes can go 12 laps distance and the Options 6 laps. Obviously they have to run each compound at least once but even the most simple minded person can see you don't need to make more than the one mandatory pitstop, so why does this happen every race? It completely ruins the game for me.