In racing games, how do the developers determine which cars get the ‘best’ stats? Do they try to emulate real life as well as possible or do brands pay them for inflated stats?

Question

In racing games, how do the developers determine which cars get the ‘best’ stats? Do they try to emulate real life as well as possible or do brands pay them for inflated stats?

In: Other

Answer 1

I have just started learning game dev. I do not know what the AAA Devs actually do. They can just do some research. But if it was upto me, I would identify several factors like acceleration, top speed, breaking, how well it turns.
Then I would give an importance level to these, like acceleration is 5, breaking is 2, top speed is 6.
Then I would add them up in a formula like
Weightage*stat = final rating.

Eg. The Ferrari has 90/100 acceleration, 75/100 breaking
Then the final rating would be 0.9×5 + .85×2 = 5.2

If you want to know how they would get the number 90/100 for acceleration, that is research.