The engineering put into the game is unquestionable. But the amount of engineering in the competition itself is pretty small compared to real racing. Top-tier

The engineering put into the game is unquestionable. But the amount of engineering in the competition itself is pretty small compared to real racing. Top-tier sim racing teams actually do have race engineers and test drivers with telemetry and all to set up the cars. Racing sims have roughly the same amount of things to tweak as the real cars do. But in F1, the often forgotten fact is that every car is different and engineered for the particular race track. The Ferrari that runs at Monza (low downforce) is significantly different from the Ferrari that runs at Monaco (high downforce) or Silverstone (medium-high downforce compromise). By contrast, every car is the same in simracing, apart from the setup (which can make a huge difference).