I have logged hundreds of hours playing management sims. Starting with Front Page Sports back in the 90's to Out of the Park Baseball in the earlier 2000's and several versions of FM. I was brought to this game by FM's advertisement that it was on for half price. The sim seems much more simple than the sports sims I usually play but I think that is somewhat of an illusion. While you don't have the plays to call of American football or the complexity of roles and duties to make a formation and style of play work in what the rest of the world calls Football (Soccer to the Americas North of Mexico and maybe South of Canada), there is a rich complexity to the game with a lot of choices. It becomes clear early on that are many paths to take and few are completely wrong or right. You can micromange your dirvers telling them to push hard to get out of a pack or dally a bit to save fuel. You can push your tires for an advantage or sit back try to block those behind you and let them cool.

As an economist I can this game is economics at its finest. For every action there is a tradeoff. You can go faster but at the risk of running out of fuel. You can be more agressive and take chances but your tires wear faster. You can design new parts but at the expense of upgrades to your facilities. The game is finding the right balance from everything to increasing acceleration for your car increases oversteering to new parts now versus faster improvements later.

This draft 1 and needs some editing. A section on running the race and practicing is to come.

• Tutorial

Definitely do this the first time a lot of good stuff in it that isn't easy to learn elsewhere. You may want to restart after the tutorial and turn it off though. There is a slight disadvantage that your business decisions begin after the first race with the tutorial. If you turn the tutorial off you can get sponsors, start improvements, and designs, and strat negotation with staff and scouting drivers a few days earlier.

• Creating your character

The only thing that seems to matter is your trait. Which you choose depends on what kind of team you want to manage. A low advertising cash strapped team will always benefit from financial while a high ranked team with prima donnas can benefit from ex driver for the morale boosts. Those in between can benefit from financial or engineer that speeds up designs and improvements by a day.

• Choosing a Team

I always go for the hero challenges in FM so I love taking a minnow and trying to bring them to the glory of the premier leagues. So I prefer a weak team. Predator is the team I have used the most.

Europe Difficulty in my opinion from hardest to easiest.

Predator hard start but you have low wages and high potential. You have the worst car, the worst drivers, the worst advertising, tied for the worst facilities, and the worst staff. You have some good potential in one mechanic, your developer, and one of your drivers. This is going to be a slower build with 10th place finishes in races being a victory your first season. It is made easier because you can end up dead last as a team and your boss doesn't care.

Octane
On some levels it looks better than ZRT and Archer. You have a better car than the other two but your staff is weak, you have equal facilities and worst of all Predator's sponsorship. While the starting cash is higher than ZRT or Octane you don't have the money potential at start.

Archer
Pretty balanced and midrange in everything. The Honda Accord of Racing no real advantages but nothing wrong with it either. They do have a level 2 factory which is helpful compared to ZRT and Predator

ZRT
Great sponsorship will help with the cash flow despite low starting funds. You can easily go to several million on your first deals. Great drivers for Europe. No staff although some with potential and tied with Predator for worst facilities. The ability to generate cash makes it much easier for ZRT than Predator, Octane, or Archer.

Silva This is more like a Mercedes CLA class it is an upgrade from the Accord and has some flash but it isn't the strongest car on the road. Pretty middle of the road but funding is moderate at best. An upgrade to Archer BMR

Firebird Better cash flow potential than Silva but not at the Dragon/Vexala level. Firebird has a car and driver advantage but doesn't have the cash flow of Dragon or Vexala

Dragon
Nice cash, good staff, great facilities. What's the catch? Your car and drivers are mid ranged for the competition. One of them is a paid driver that gets a good chunk of your income which makes upgrades on drivers harder. The mitigating factor is the cash, facilities, and staff will allow you to improve the car and build parts much easier than the previous 4.

Vexala comes in close to Dragon. Good car, Good Drivers, Good cash, poor staff and facilities. The cash can overcome that though they have the best sponsorship. Still upgrading facilities takes time. It is toss up between Vexala and Dragon. Vexala has the money edge and a edge on car and driver but Dragon starts with the staff and facilities so they can build faster.

Eastwood/Garunda Pretty close in quality on most things. Garunda has better rankings in all but sponsorship whie Eastwood has slightly better sponsorship. These two are ahead of the game on most ascepts so the money isn't as important. Of course you want to stay ahead of the curve but training staff and drivers, improvements, and new parts isn't as important as it is the tier 3 squads (Predator, ZRT, Octane, Archer) or the teir 2 (Silva, Firebird, Dragon, Vexala

Also the higher the expectations the higher the pressure so while the weak teams are toughest to compete with there are close to 0 expectations with them. It is hard to lose a teir 3 job.

• Sponsors

This guide has Predator in mind. So the first thing I do with a low starting cash team is check out the sponsors.

First slots bonus per placement
Upfront payment is preferrable. We need cash now.
You are unlikely to place beyond 14 or so in the first few races until your crappy car becomes competitive even then your drivers are average at best. So forego the contracts with no upfront payment and a bonus if you place a certain spot or higher. Spot 9 will be hard to get in your first season so unless there is an upfront payment those place 4 or higher are worthless.

Second Bank upfront and bonus per race

While up front payment is preferable for sponsors who require place X or higher, the second set of slots is a bit tricker. I usually go by best payment per race. So the $1 million 10 race sponsorship is not going to be as good as $350 sponsorship for 4 races which will net $1.4 million in less than half the time.

• Finances Next Year's Car

A bit of a spoiler. You might thank me for this one. At the end of the Season after 10 races you will recieve prize money. I came in 10th and got around 15 million. If you spend right and have some money left over, this is enough to fully finance the car and have some left over even at a low investment. To get the best of everything is around $16 million. So the 15 million you get plus $500 per race going to the car ($5 million) will get the best possible next year car with money to spare. Granted you have to weigh that against upgrading buildings and leaving money for new part designs. At the highest expenditure you only get $5 million more which is a couple of engine designs or first level staff building.

• Review Staff

Developer
Not much to do here on the first day. Developers determine components available all starting have the first 3 teirs of components. You need facilities to unlock the higher components so no real need to change developers right away unles they are low skilled with no potential then dump them for someone with at least more potential.
Mechanics
You want to replace the low ability low potential guys on your staff. Predator starts with a race mechanic who is low skill and no potential to move up.

Reliability vs. Performance
You need one of each a high rating can speed up improvement work. You only need one high performance staff and one high realibility. The dilema for predator is you have a low potential mechanic with decent permonce upgrades skills but neither has reliability. To upgrade reliability you have to axe your potential star. There are a couple further along mechanics with better current skills that have equal potential to the your high potential mechanic but they come at a higher cost.

Pit Skills

Concentration
Determines the likelihood of mistakes when a driver pulls in for a Pit Stop this might be too little gas or a part not fully repaired. High priority stat

Part Fixes

Important at the beginning of seasons when parts are weak. This determines how fast they fix a part. Once you improve the reliability on parts this isn't all that important. Occasionaly a wing will break though which involves a part fix. Low priority

Pit Stops
Very important. Determines how fast he gets your driver out of the pit. Probably the most important stat. Along with being designers these guys run the pit for your drivers.

Chemistry
How fast a driver bonds with a mechanic. Less importance. Since you are developing drivers you plan to keep them for a while. You will get 100% pretty ealry on if you don't change drivers. Low priority

In my last playthrough I stuck with the initial mechanics but as I stated if you want to replace the high potential doesn't know the boot from bonnett when it comes to improvement with a higher reliability score mechanic there are a couple of more expensive options with eqaul or more potential. Replacing both mechanics may not be a bad idea you have some guys on the cheap with the same performance stat and better pit skills then the guy you start with. You will pay more though.

• Scout Drivers

You want to scout the unemployed drivers. Some teams will need immediate improvement. Predator has a number 2 driver which shuld be reserve at best but has slight potential and a rubbish reserve driver with no potential. Much less of an issue for a team like ZRT. To determine if the driver is better you have to scout them first.

• Improve Parts vs. Design Parts

Most important lesson. This isn't like the design process. You will notice staff impact X or X% per day and cheif mechanic X% or X per day this is what is added to the performance or the reliability stat each day. So even if it will take you well beyond the race to get 100% reliability or max performance for the part, it does add up daily.

reliability vs. performance

At first I thought this was a no brainer. However, you start with a lot of parts that can improved on performance to a similar or better stat than your first 1 component slot average part. I have also noticed above 50% parts don't tend to break. Even at 40% sometimes you get through a race with the component lasting and sometimes you don't. I would try to bring reliability to about 60%. At the same time you can increase the performance of your stock parts.

design and improve
This is a balancing act with the need for new facilities such as training facilities to tap the potential of your drivers and staff and R&D and factory expansions to get more workers and make designs and improvement. You have to pull your car from worst in the competition while realizing you need long term investment in facilities.

Design Philosophy

Philosophy A
You want the highest max and reliability on parts possible. If there is a significant difference. Your mechanics will improve performance and realibility if necessary. Higher realiability makes for less realibility improvement but more performance improvment.

Philosophy B
You want max ratings on parts and take the negative on reliability if needed. Realibility will be crap but that is what the realibility guy I hired is there for.

Either way you always have a chance to get reliability to 100% your component choices determine the cap for performance ratings.

Also note that when new cars are built after race 10 in the European circuit, the top 2 parts will be used to determine next year's stats. So you want 2 of each part if possible to try to max this. Also any illegal tags will be removed during the offseason.

Sometimes the first part will be a throw away because one average component won't make a better part than what you have at full performance improvement. Choose minus 1 day then try again with an average component and a good component. You will spend money on a part you will never use but you have to do it to make a better part.

Always remember the balance is between investing in the future vs. consuming now. This is a growth model with optimal consumption (designs) now. The choice is long term investment vs. short gain. You need both to keep up.

As predator the first season can be seen as a throw away season. So there are a couple of approaches. You can invest in parts which will make the base car better next year and might get you a little higher finishes which helps build your marketability which leds to sponsors. Alternatively you can go in debt early and build a factory improvement. This maximizes your ability to improve parts. You can build the factory early and catch up on parts with possible idle factory time while you build or build the parts first and catch up with the factory by season 2.

One other warning don't pay for a design that will done after your last race. You lose your money when the season ends and your team starts designing cars.

This should complete your first day.

As you move along in the game you will have to prioritize your spending.

• Factory Upgrade

Really the most important first upgrade to buildings. You need at $3 million to invest in it and it takes over 20 weeks to build. You may not see it in season 1 but it doubles your improvement slots and workers who do improvements. It can really speed up improving parts.

• Other buildings

There are only 3 choices before you upgrade your factory and R&D

Staff Center
Nice long term investment but low priority. Your drivers and mechanic learn some skills faster. In season 1 over $5 million is better in parts. Especially for Predator who has something akin to a Rickshaw in the beginning. This is important in increase designer and mechanic skills. For drivers you need several buildings to train all skills when they aren't racing.

Forecast center
Very low priority but nice better weather forecating to make decsions.

Scouting Facility.
Again nice but an investment for further down the road. Allows you to discover more drivers.

• Designs

What to prioritize should depend on your next race. Go to your calendar and click on the next race and one after. You can't do much about the Black Sea but race 2 emphasizes engine and acceleration. Your first parts should be those. Make sure you can design them before the race.

Also improve the parts that will be crucial or useful for the next race first. If the parts change you don't lose the work put into improvement by switching to a more imporant part for the next race. Even if you can't finish the improvements for 2 parts they will be better by race day.

• Designs vs. Buildings
  There is a delicate balance here. More testing is needed but there are 2 strategies.
  1. Build the factory upgrade first
  This doubles your staff and even with predator you have this up and running late in the season.
  Pros
  maximizes production
  increase slots for improvements
  Cons
  takes $8 million away from parts development. That is significant. Your car in year is likely to be worse and without part designs you aren't likely to start placing higher. That effects your marketability. In noticed even getting to 11 by race 5 or increased the marketability more than placing 14 to 18.
  2. Design parts first
  This is getting the factory up by season 2 when you will need the improvements on the new car. Prioritize parts first then build the factory at lest 20 weeks before the car build is done so you have the extra staff to improve all the new parts.
  While it is tempting to improve just one car, a second set of parts will help the base parts on your next car have better stats if they are closer to the best part.
  Pros
  More competitive in season 1
  Possibly more ad money as marketability rises a bit more
  
  Cons
  The improvements take a lot longer with 10 staff and 4 slots.
  Possibly total production lost due to having 4 slots for improvement over 8 longer. That depends on if you have the parts to improve though.
  

• Improvements

Reliability
This is something that you shoot for around 60% min. Improve your lowest parts first.

Performance
As stated early the improvement choices should have an eye to the next race or three. Sometimes you find 3 races where it is top speed crucial acceleration useful followed by acceleration crucial, top speed crucial. Don't let a long time to finish scare you if you work on the crucial part or parts they will be better before the next race even if not at 100% potential.

• Upgrade drivers

I suggest doing this early but only with paid drivers. Ines Santa Ana is good enough to get you around 11 to 16 which will get the early bonuses. The second driver isn't as important. I found a Norweigan and a Finnish paid driver. The Fin was better than the starting 2 I paid around $90 a race to get about $220k from her sponsor. The Norwegian was rubbish but had the same potential as the original 2. I paid him around 36k a race and used in him practice where about $100 was paid by his sponsor (50% of the $220 bonus).

Paid drivers are an invesment and a better 2 can get points that gives you a chance to move up from 10. I don't put much into in season 1 I just want a couple of paid drivers for number 2 and reserve. It is about $460k to fire the two drives and about $500 k in cost when add bonus. However, the Nowergian was about 50k more than the original 2 and I got $220k for using her so it is a $170k per race or $850 to $1.5 million for season 1 depending on how fast she is hired (assuming race 2 is the earliest and race 6 the lastest. The other guy was about the same price as my reserve driver I fired and brought in $100k per practice run assuming he is hired from race 4 to 7 that is another $400k to $700k.

So I see the paid drivers as an investment both have potential to be better and I spend about $500k to 1.25 million to 2.2 million. A really nice 50 to 340%+return

I will note in a way it seems a little like cheating since you just took over and have guys on contracts that haven't gotten a chance to show they are rotten drivers. Is it really realistic to fire them for young unemployed paid drivers? Your choice to make it. The extra million or 2 is nice, it might put over as opposed to being close to buying something but it won't buy you a factory upgrade on its own.

• Driver Selection

You have the option to choose a driver for practice. Generally I choose the 2 highest feedback drivers. These will give you the best bonuses for knowing the track and the most feedback. If my reserve driver is a paid driver use them for practice.

• Take Practice or Instant Result

Not a huge difference here. You still get feedback on your car and can adjust the settings according to your driver saying it is poor or excellent. However, taking the practice gives tyre and race trim bonuses for the race which I have never seen with instant result. At times I have seen instant result give no feedback on the downforce, oversteer vs. understeer, and acceleration versus top speed selection. Once you 100% relation with mechanics you will get there bonuses which are always nicer.

• Tyre selection

I usually go with the longest lasting. I run medium races so 22 to 31 laps are common. You will notice once you get to feul that you always need a minimum of 2 pit stops, if you can conserve fuel. More likely 3 pitstops. The only time I seem to pull off if I am a lap or two behind and don't have to run the last lap or 2. So tire selection should be based on laps. You want to select tires that will get you through the race in 2 or 3 pit stops. Also note because you don't have good smoothness in predator drivers unless you run on cold tyres you want get the low number of laps. Running grey all the time usually gets me 6 laps out of a 12 lap tyre.
Depending on laps you might want to go softer then harder than softer. Once you know how long your tyres really last with your drivers and strategy you might find you can start with softer tyres do a stint with soft or medium, then go back to SS or soft for the rest.

• Fuel choice

Not taking a full tank can speed you up some. Again technically you can trim and still get 3 pitstops. Just remember at best you will have a partial lap feul when you pit so a 24 lap race might not mean you take 8 laps of feul each time. I generally start with a full tank and refill fully until the last stint when I give a half to 1 lap extra so I can run high engine.

• Strategy

Your first two seasons as predator you will have drivers that go through tyres like a fat guy goes through hotdogs as Ines is found of saying when tyre heat is high. There are great guides for race strategy but they really apply to decent to good drivers and cars. There isn't a huge benefit from micromanaging the engine and tyres with a poor car and poor drivers. Your suppliers in the first couple of seasons coupled with bad drivers mean higher than average tyre wear and heat. So the race isn't about going the fastest. This is the turtle vs. hair. You want moderate steady speed over higher speeds and more aggression. The higher agression tears up your tyres and makes you pit 4 or 5 times instead of 2 or 3. The extra seconds are lost when a pit stop costs you 30+ seconds (10 seconds in, can be around 10 seconds to pit, 10 seconds out).

Since you will go through tyres fast it is best to conserve and run on cold tires if you are using softs. Mediums give you more room. You get a few extra laps out of mediums. If I stay in the grey a soft will last me 6 laps and I have a minimum 3 laps of fuel in the tank. On conserve they last me about 10 laps and my tank is almost empty when I pit. So if mediums aren't available conserve and high (particularly if you have the engine perk which reduces damage to the engine from going high) will bring the tyres down almost to red and empty your tank about the same tims. With mediums you can run in the grey zone and come out with almost empty tank when you have to switch tyres.
Soft or Super soft keep the tyres cold run conserve or back up if you have to. You will be able to only pit twice if you are lucky. Three times at most unless parts break on you.
Medium push until you are about 50% on the tyre heat guage adjust back to neutral or conserve at Tondella where the track runs hot. Move back to push if you drop into the blue.

You won't be able to out run the opponents with a bad car, bad cornering, etc. You can shave off 30 seconds of your time by pitting once less than the other guy. I discovered this in season 2 and placed 6 where most of my season 1 was 14 or less by keeping the tyres cool. So the key here is pit less than anyone else.

• The Unexpected

So you have your tortoise strategy down. You plan for 3 pits but you hope that it will work out where a lap is shaved off and you get 2. Then that rival smashes into you and destroys your rear wing. The worst thing that can happen is a wing breaks due to a collission always fix ASAP. You will go incredibly slow on corners and lose laps to your opponents even if you get this done quickly.

Now that is fixed your driver is telling you have dodgy parts. Don't worry about until the % is below 20. You will be fine. 20% is critical and unless you only have a lap or 2 left you risk exiting the race due to part failure. When you get the under 20% message you can usualy go another lap or 2. I suggest change tyres no later than seeing 39% and try to have fuel at 1 or 2 laps. It is the 40 MPH pit lane that loses time more than your mechancis working. You lose at least 20 seconds going in and leaving the pit lane. So if you stretch one or two more laps and fix parts, change tyres, and feul all at the same time do it. Do before aware you risk retiring if you push the car too far.

This is where reliability over performance comes in. Just keep in mind with your improvements your current best parts carry over to next year so you can't ignore improvement.

• The Safety car is your friend

These come out when they is a crash and the track needs to be clear. Set feul burn to low and back up for tyre wear everyone has to slow down and you will get eventually get stuck in a cluster where you can't overtake. No need to burn extra feul. Go ahead and pit and change tyres here if needed. In a rare case where you are close to full feul and tyres it might cause an extra pit to stop now. In almost all cases this is an free pit stop where you lose little ground because it is like rush hour on the freeway with cars going 40 miles an hour unable to pass. You lose less time relatively pitting when cars are moving at 40 MPH than when they are hitting 200 MPH on the straight aways and traveling more distance while you pit.

For season 1 your sole priority is improving parts and having enough to upgrade your factory at the end of the season.

• Employees

The Danish race mechanic is bad at pit stops and has little potential. Alex your UK mechanic has no reliability but is good at pit stops and ok at performance. There is a UK mechanic Ellen that has good potential and has an ok reliability rating. You pay up to 30k a race for her instead of 10k but you have your reliability mechanic if you. So send her an offer. Hopefully she accepts on the first or second try that is all you get. This is tough if the first offer comes back with insulted under areas. You don't know if you are 2 clicks off or 5. Unhappy is usually 2 or 3 clicks off. Fire the Dane and you now have a commonwealth staff with decent stats for the ERS and good potential.

Drivers

You have bad drivers. Ines isn't good but has potential. Her marketability is low. We need cash bad. So I put together a Nordic team. Miia Lathien is not quite as good as Ines Santa Anna but she is a paid driver. Her sponsors give you 298k for each race she is in and 149k if she only practices. Bjorn Bjelland is also paid same deal.
Scout all unemployed drivers put Bjorn and Miia first.

Option 1 max cash
offer Miia and Bjorn 1 and 2 respectively. You will pay Miia from 91 to 100k a race and Bjorn around 31 to 35k (US $ not sure if the number is converted for other currencies). You will also have to pay them bonus of around 90k and 30k. Hopefully they accept the offer. Replace Ines with Miia and Williams with Bjorn.
Investment is about 1.1 million in bonus and break contract. Lets assume this happens around race 3.
Prior wages about 180k
New wages about $220k
$40 more per race buy you recieve
$596 K from Bjorn and Miia's sponsors.
$550k gain from the race
All things equal you offset 1.1 investment in one race. The remaining 7 races bring in an extra 3.85 million. But wait there is more. Bjorn is 100 on marketability and Miia is higher than Ines so you get better sponsors for your car.

You can fire your reserve for the talented Italian 17 y/o but it cost money and it is a pain to see the 17 y/o quickly become much better than Bjorn but you can't promote her with a marketability hit and a hit to per race payments.

Option 2

Use Miia to replace Williams and Bjorn as reserve. You don't get as big a marketability impact since Bjorn is reserve but you come out ahead. You have two pretty equal drivers at 1 and 2.

• Car development

First I balance improvement and reliability. To show the disparity I bought Gaurdia's brakes once. My starting breaks were 1 and 2 with about 50% reliability the new part was 267 at 90%! So you are way behind the lead. Still brakes can up to about 35. Your engine sucks and can be improved as well.

For parts I make 2 good parts of each over the season. Not to equate cars but to get the highest numbers for next season. I probably won't use the second one since it will come late so feel free to use an illegal part. It will be legal with similar stats next season. In some cases the average part is worse than improved originals. Just choose minus 1 day component and treat as a throw away until you can do better.

At the end of season I had 2 good parts for everything which I maxed improved. I have a little over 8 million.

• End of season

If you kept your reserve driver and or Williams their contracts will be up. You can resign Katie or hire a bigger potential driver. If you see someone you can groom to be a number 1 sign them. If not you can resign your reserve.

I invested in a parts factory upgrade and went with the best of suppliers for the car. I had about 3 million left to deal with dilemmas.

A note on the staff facility it is tempting because you have growing staff. Your staff gets better over time depending on age. The younger they are the faster their skills go up. This is time consuming though. It might take 2 years for a full point growth. The staff center might shave off 6 months. It is a long term investment. You won't see much in immediate results. I haven't determined when is optimal to build it. You want to build it somewhat early but not in season 1. For season 2 you need the extra staff and slots to get your reliability up.

I have just started to play with the GT DLC and haven't played a GT team yet. There is a significant change though. lathinen and Bjelland are employed as most of the unemployed drivers when you begin a new game with Predator. The Race Mechanic I usually get from unemployed is also employed with a GT team. There are only 3 unemployed drivers. Gamer favorite for predator Rodriguez is also employed.

For Predator the good news is you want to stick to an Aussie team you get 2 new Aussie drivers. Neither have potential but they make decent number 2 drivers for the ERS. Franky Kinney is a paid driver. So while you may not be able to get Lathien and Bjelland if you have the GT DLC you can get a better number driver at 2 stars who gets $200k per race from sponsors.

The other thing that is different is the simulate practice instead of the old instant results. Not sure if this is a real difference but you watch the practice.

• New Car design

Emphasize improvability over feul efficency. That bonus to base stats is big. Go all out if you can on tyre wear and heat with you tyre and brake suppliers. It makes a difference in tyre wear which makes race startegy easier. Also smoothness helps here. The feul efficency is less important. Usually you can run on high all race with no problem. Just pack an extra lap or 2 in your tank for your last stint.

• Parts improvement

Reliability is still king. When you begin start with improving engine because it takes the longest to repair. Since you are improving engine your first part should be somthing else. Then you can work on the reliability of the average of good part when you get to improving that part.
Time to repair most to least.
1. Engine
2. Gearbox
3. Suspension
4. Brakes

Switch parts that you are improving between races

I go for the lowest reliability parts between races. My improvement from first to second race is always engine. After that I choose the parts with the least reliability. You don't have to keep improving to 100%

Don't waste part design

Building two good components is tempting at first. I find often that you won't max both on performance so the impact on next year is limited. Until you build the buildings that allow great parts just build one average and one good each season for each part. Save the rest for building improvement. If you are meeting sponsor goals in the first 2 seasons then you might want to use illegal parts for the extra boost. You may not want to race with them in that season but the illegal tag will be lifted and you get the extra boost next season.

• HQ

Scouting

Don't underestimate this one. By season 4 or 5 all the proven good drivers were wanting about half of my chairman payment or more per race. I was able to find some 2 stars with 4 or 5 star potential. Finding hidden drivers might make a big difference in finding quality drivers you can afford.

After Factory and Staff Center upgrade have a statergy on HQ buildings

For Predator staff center should be second priority. You have a lot of young staff and drivers who need to improve. The staff center makes them improve faster. All staff stats increase with faster with the staff center. Fitness and Focus for drivers increases faster with it.

My Predator plan not the only one. I wanted to prioritize engines and gearboxes. About half or of ERS races list these as crucial. You suffer corners by deemphasizing breaks and suspension but get the best out of straight aways so this was my plan of builds.
1. Factory level 2 always first priority before season 2 starts. You have parts at about 40% reliability when season 2 starts everything needs a lot of work. You need the extra staff and slots.
2. Staff Center: I want my staff getting better as fast as possible.
3, Scouting GT DLC changed this. Few unemployed drivers and staff need better scouting
4. Test Track: I don't have the best drivers at cornering so this is helpful. Also it always great engine parts to be used. Engine is my first priority.
5. Telementry: Gearbox is second priority so I want to increase that next.
6. Brakes R&D: Fairly cheap at 8 million allows Great parts and improves driver breaking
7. R&D Center level 2
8. Tour Center First income building (these could be bumped up to 4 and 5 to max income before going for better parts)
9. Staff Center 2: Fairly cheap and increases the learning rate again.
10. Telementry 2: allows epic parts and more increases in smoothness and consistency. Fairly cheap and you are done here.
11. Handling development
12. Factory upgrade level 3
13. R&D Upgrade 3
14. Staff 3
15. Test Track 2 (very expensive but then you are done here)
16. Telementry 3
17. Brakes 2
18. Road car income generating (due to high cost may move down)
19. Staff Center level 3
20. Test track level 3
21. Telementry level 3
22. Brakes level 3
23. Handling level 2
24. Handling level 3
25. Factory level 4
26. R&D level 4
27. Theme park

Situational hard to priotize
Helipad Allows 5 star sponsors. You need 5 star or high 4 star marketability for this to be useful.
Simulator and Wind Tunnel I would put these low but they are useless in ERS because these are stock parts. So wait until you can develop these unless you just want the driver bonuses.
Forecasting center. Fairly cheap but small at best advantage. Even without I usually have the forecast enough laps ahead to make a decent to good decsision if I need to change between slicks, intermediates, and wets. Pretty cheap can be done early but doesn't seem to have a huge advantage in my opinion.