I've seen this in almost every MP race I've raced and honestly, it's part sad part irritating. What do you guys think of fiddling with ELO this way? I don't think it will do anyone any good in the long run.
Sorry, I'll be more coherent. People connect during qualifiers, do a few laps, leave the game and reconnect in the last few seconds. And since the drivers without a lap time get ordered by connection time: whoever connects latest - gets worse position. In theory that sounds bad, but if you're racing against rookies or better yet drivers with similar rating that you manage to overtake: you will obviously end up the race quite a few positions higher. Of course there's possibility they have really bad connection but suspiciously the never get disconnected during the race itself. Also: I don't see really good drivers doing it at all. I realize I'm quite new to sim racing and can be very wrong about it, so if there's another explanation: I'll be glad to learn.
Don't worry, this doesn't help their rating, rather the opposite. Your rating doesn't depend on how many drivers you overtook, it only depends on what's your finishing position and your and your opponents ratings. If you care about rating, it's usually better to qualify as high as possible because that will increase your chances of better finish. People who rejoin quali to start at the back do it for fun.
I know some drivers who won't set a quali time at all because they want to be in the back and drive safely to the front and don't want to get mixed up in the middle-field with their 1st lap crashes. They just want to raise their Reputation.
There is also the possibility they got kicked due to surpassing the incident points limit and rejoined. If they are not good drivers that is probably the reason.
Maybe.But some of them never come out of the garage and during the race they put pretty good laptimes.
Well you get all sorts in this game as in life. Some may prefer the challenge of working their way through the grid and not care about rep or rating. You can see that on non ranked servers too.
That was me when I used to play in the RR servers. In fact I would start in the pit lane to give all the crashes a chance to clear up. I was never going to win a race, but just staying on the track would be enough to propel me up the field, due to the number of crashes and disqualifications.