I decided to give the sport mode a chance for the first time today, so I started out with class E and SR - B, right now I'm on class C (nearly B) and SR - S, so I actually climbed the most challenging ranks in terms of messing up others' races. To be honest, having tried both the Nordschleife and Monza races, it didn't feel as catastrophic as I was expecting in terms of dirty driving.
I started on the Nordschleife and it did start off a bit messy, but after a few corners there's already clear breathing space between those who are there to put others off and those who are there to actually try and do a proper race. I started off without qualifying (because when I ran the first race, didn't have time to finish the lap and from then on, there was never enough time to put a lap in), and sometimes I had to lose time behind other cars (until they crashed most of the time) before pulling away, but all in all it wasn't too bad. I decided to jump one race to qualify after being punted off trying to overtake for 1st place, from then on, pole all the time and wins. I was on the lower ranks though, so the competition wasn't very intense, I just had to keep on track to pull away and win by +20s.
On Monza, I actually had loads of fun, I ran quite a few races as well and small touches here and there aside, everything seemed to be ok! Never really caught anyone trying to put me or someone else off on purpose, so my experience has been clearly different to most of you. One thing I was actually surprised to see was when I was getting ready to overtake other cars into T1, in the splitstream down the straight, they would never leave their line to try and defend. There was also one time where the guy who was chasing me pushed me off, like others have mentioned, with a slight touch on my rear in a braking zone, and because of that I lost two places, but when I got thos places back and got behind him 1 or 2 laps later on the main straight, he pulled off his line and slowed down to let me pass.
I think I'm just getting really lucky with the matchmaking.
The one thing I really find to be annoying is the messed up BoP. I started out in Monza with a BMW GT3, for no particular reason, just like the car, and it's absurd the difference in pace to the GTR, AMG, and even the DB9. In qualy I could make it to 1.49s if I could really get things together and in the race I would be running high 50s low 51s, mostly fighting withthe GTRs upfront. I switched to try the GTR to see if it felt faster and it's absurd. I made a 1:47.2 on qualy and in the race I could sit happily on the low 49s all race.
I figured that as the BMW has less power and is lighter, the BoP would make it more powerfull and heavier, which is what happens and it gets roughly the same power as a stock GTR, but then when you see the BoP effects on the GTR, it's basically the same, it boosts up the power and makes it a bit heavier. This system is very very broken.