I barely got the gold out of this just last year and I used comfort medium tyres. I only use a wheel with GT6, for the previous game I tried drifting with sticks six and a half years ago. I don't think it really matters much which you choose at least when it comes to Coffee Breaks, the important thing is the fun factor.
I have that replay but can't think of much more pointers than the gears I used (paddle shifting), so:
Section 1: 2
1672 pts
Section 2 (hard!): 3rd for a second, 4th for the rest
956 pts
Section 3: 2nd for the left, then to 4th and pumping the throttle, speedometer reads around 78 km/h
3121 pts
Section 4: From 1st to 2nd at the start, to 3rd at the "-" sign
1556 pts (remainder, replay is ending too soon)