In career mode, I feel like any two cars should be identical if they both have every upgrade - whether it's the Merc and Ferrari, or the Merc and the McLaren - with all upgrades, they should be virtually identical. Meaning, upgrades bring a more significant boost for a team like Sauber, than a team like Ferrari. This just makes sense, because the top teams should have diminishing returns on improvements, while the bottom teams have a lot of room to improve.

I'm also extremely discouraged after learning this. I too am driving for McLaren, and after getting half the engine upgrades I'm still not making any progress. Sauber are still flying past me with their 2016 Ferrari engine, despite the fact that the current real world Honda engine has surpassed Mercedes 2016 Abu Dhabi power months ago...

McLaren is my favourite team, and I was looking forward to fighting my way back up the grid, eventually challenging Ferrari and Mercedes. But now that I know I can't, unless I turn the difficulty way down and defend in a very unrealistic manner, I'm having severe doubts about whether to carry on or jump to at least a semi-competitive team like Renault or Haas who will fare much much better (even if they won't ever be quite as good as the front runners either, at least they don't have the ridiculous handicap that McHonda does)...