I'm not a great driver, but I am just under 2/10ths slower in the Alfa 4C at Gardens than in the Megane. I'm sure its because I feel totally at home with the Alfa.
I think it's driver rating first, then sportsmanship.
I've been switching back and forth between 2 accounts. The drivers I meet with my rating at B are a heck of a lot cleaner than the ones I see on my primary account with my rating at A. Well, I'm not exactly at A yet, I'm like, 700 points away and I've been mired there for 4 days whilst my SR keeps plummeting. I think the A drivers are trying too hard. After getting pole at Suzuka tonight with the primary acct., I think 2nd and 3rd place ( both DR A ) were upset a B driver beat them and took care of me in the esses.
You have that the wrong way around, it's definitely SR first then DR. It's not just by SR letter, it's by a numerical range, starting at 90 to 99 first. Sometimes the range is bigger than 10 points when there aren't enough people at the smaller range hence sometimes you can get high SR.B mixed with low SR.S (60 to 85 for example) although you usually only see mixed SR when you're rating is near a boundary.
DR is all over the place A+/S to D/S happens frequently. Matchmaking insists on matching as small an SR spread as possible first and only widens it if it can't fill the room. I also have the suspicion that matchmaking favors bigger spreads in qualifying times to maybe make cleaner races? Even when I get down to SR.B the game still puts rooms together of DR.A to DR.D while I'm pretty sure it should be possible to make a full DR.B room. Also when I was playing with a friend we sometimes ended up in different rooms while it would have made more sense to put us together as we were a lot more evenly matched than the spread in the rooms we both got in.
To get matched with more players of similar DR you''ll need to play when most people are playing and choose the most popular race of the day. However DR rankings are pretty scrambled nowadays so you might still get matched with much faster players of similar DR.
If you want to practice overtaking, don't qualify
I just qualified again for a few more races and I'm back in the parade.
I wasn't going to race today, instead I raced a lot. I took the opportunity to clean out my garage of doubles and spend all of my long time maxed out mileage points on getting as many cars qualified as N300. Then I ended up 'only' driving all the pre 1980 ones. Tons of fun to drive, although terrible for DR, all without qualifying ofcourse.
Toyota 2000 GT '67 So slow
Alpine A110 1600S '72 Hitting the rev limiter, no good
Dodge Challenger R/T '70 Hitting the rev limiter, no good
Lamborghini Countach LP400 '74 Fun but slippery
Chevrolet Corvette Stingray Convertible (C3) '69 Very nice drive, not fast
Lamborghini Miura Bertone Prototype CN.0706 '67 Great drive, about the same as the Stingray
Ferrari 512 BB '76 A bit faster, also harder to keep on the road
Ford Mustang Mach 1 '71 Would be more competitive if it didn't hit the rev limiter on all the straights, fast in corners
De Tomaso Pantera '71 Very fun to drive, top 3 with Corvette and Lamborghini
And then there is one that feels like it's on race hard tires and can keep up with the X-Bows and S-FRs
I qualified for my last couple races, 2:28.182 and managed to get 3rd again (started 5th) in my last race with a 2:28.028 best lap. The GT40 is very competitive in this race. Anything that's not an X-Bow or S-FR is easily left behind.
I also did 2 DT Gardens races in between with the Viper and 458 Italia. I started a 3rd race then quit in lap 10 to sign up for Suzuka before the entry would close. DT gardens was kinda boring.
Great day for the vintage GT experience. Too bad a couple other oldies either couldn't be tuned high enough or are stuck in GR.X. Oh and that Raptor truck on the track is very intimidating, looks like a monster truck next to these little oldies.
. Tumbled down the field and then had to deal with the lower mid field. I just couldn't get a clear run through the corners because everyone seemed to be taking weird lines that ended in really slow exits and me with no where to go. I got caught up in the pack and banged about resulting in another orange SR. By the time the race finished I had a 6s penalty and dropped to P9. 
, I went again. This time I started in P6. Bit disappointing from P3, but there was more DR/Bs.
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