It seems to be common through a lot of races, I couldn't understand the point to begin with but then, when you consider the tutorial at the beginning, it is clear that PD are trying to get new players to the GT series, even if it does annoy those more experienced. I agree that there should be a difficulty scale of, say, beginner, experienced and Extreme or something....of course, the problem with that is that PD would have to revamp the AI to cater for the differing difficulty levels and we know that they are obsessively against ever making the AI half decent. Am expecting even more of this "we are going to treat you like you have never looked at a car before" tutoring and difficulty in GT7, much like a lot of other games