I remember the first time I fired up the latest F1 game, eager to dive into what promised to be the most realistic racing experience yet. Like many of you, I headed straight for the career mode, dreaming of climbing from backmarker to world champion. But what I discovered was a scoring system that seemed to reward gaming the system rather than genuine racing skill. The whole experience felt like I'd stumbled into some bizarre parallel universe where the fastest way to win was to intentionally lose first.
Let me walk you through what happened in my most recent championship attempt. I qualified on pole position with a blistering lap that felt absolutely perfect - the kind of moment that makes you jump out of your chair. But then, following advice from online forums, I deliberately replaced every single engine component, taking a massive grid penalty that dropped me to last place. The race itself became this strange exercise in damage control rather than pure racing. I started P20 in a field of 20 cars, and over 58 laps at Silverstone, I fought my way back through the pack. The final result? P1, with maximum points from both the race finish and overtakes. It felt simultaneously rewarding and completely wrong - like I'd discovered a cheat code that undermined the entire spirit of racing.
The fundamental issue here is what the community has come to call the "Jili system" - that convoluted scoring mechanism that prioritizes overtakes above everything else. Here's where we discover how to Jili try out and boost your skills, but not in the way the developers intended. The current meta forces players to choose between racing properly or gaming the system for maximum points. In my experience, starting from pole and finishing first typically nets you around 25-28 points. But if you take those grid penalties and climb from last to first, you can easily accumulate 45-50 points through the combination of race finish positions and overtake bonuses. That's nearly double the reward for what's essentially exploiting a flawed system rather than demonstrating superior racing ability.
What makes this particularly frustrating is the time investment required. A typical race weekend in this mode takes me about 90-120 minutes to complete properly. When you're grinding through multiple seasons in career mode, those hours add up quickly. I calculated that to complete just three full seasons using this "optimal" strategy would require approximately 75-100 hours of gameplay. That's an enormous time commitment for what should be an enjoyable gaming experience rather than a second job. The mode becomes less about racing and more about min-maxing statistics, which completely defeats the purpose of a racing simulation.
The solution isn't complicated - it just requires the developers to rebalance the scoring weights. Instead of awarding 2 points per overtake regardless of position, the system should consider the quality of overtakes and position consistency. Maybe award bonus points for leading laps, for fastest laps, for clean racing throughout. In my ideal system, I'd allocate points something like this: 25 points for winning, plus 0.5 points per overtake against higher-rated AI opponents, 5 points for leading the most laps, 3 points for fastest lap, and deductions for incidents. This would create a more balanced approach that rewards genuine racing excellence rather than strategic manipulation.
What I've learned from spending 86 hours in this game mode is that sometimes the most efficient path isn't the most enjoyable one. While the current Jili system encourages this backward qualifying strategy, I've found more satisfaction in playing against harder AI difficulty and ignoring the points optimization entirely. The personal achievement of clean racing against challenging opponents ultimately feels more rewarding than chasing leaderboard positions. It's a reminder that in gaming, as in actual racing, sometimes the purest joy comes from the competition itself rather than the final score. The developers have created an incredible racing simulation here - they just need to tweak the reward structure to match the quality of the core racing experience.
