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?
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Simulators will try and achieve realism with complex physics models and feedback from drivers and engineers. F1 teams can give their drivers a decent idea how their non-existent-yet car will drive. That requires a lot of work. Commercial simulators can get pretty close even without insider info, because these physics models are really good math. Theoretical math is so good rockets fly successfully, after all parts are tested separately, but still the day you launch it, it’s the day you test it all, so given the successful launches of the last years I’d say it’s very good math.
Unfortunately good sims can be: a) not a lot of fun to “play with”. b) cpu intensive. For these two reasons simcades and arcade racers will water down the physics to make the game more engaging. And it will run on a 500$ computer.
To answer your question I don’t think devs or car makers interfere with the speccing of the virtual cars, some hard specs (0-60, weight etc) are known and grip is generally increased for all cars in impure sims to make them fun, so perhaps there isn’t much wiggle room.
Last but not least the more arcade a game the more likely it is to implement “handicap”. As a racing fan I don’t mind Hamilton disappearing until it’s podium time, but racing alone is lame to most people (is it time trials or matchmaking failed me again?). So games try to pack the race by decreasing the speed of the leader and increasing the speed of the followers. This is why specs in Mario kart are hardly important, and blue shells exist. In other games it won’t be as evident but it’s there.
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