Jeez. It's a tough car to get used to, sure , but when you do you should be within a couple of seconds off the pole on a 60second track. And even less on race-pace, since top quali times are done on some crazy sets good for one lap.
I find that there are many styles people can use to drive the car quick, but as usual being smooth is one of them. Just drive some laps on the baseline (which is decent) or setups that people post in relevant threads in a given week. It's all about precision. How you dial in steering while gradually coming off the brakes, how you add throttle to maximize acceleration given track bumps/dips/camber.
Agreed in general. Although the new car is almost like the GT3 car in the hands of faster drivers.
No. Fast people trail brake a lot, almost to the apex, and also tap brakes when they find themselves understeering. You have to maintain brake until apex, otherwise the rear inside loads too much and you're plowing. Cannot just coast and keep turning (on most setups).
Basically I'd say do this to get a handle on the car:
-Brake early and hard (move BB around--during the race too--so that the rear doesn't come around while braking straight).
-Gradually come off brakes and start dialing quite a bit of steering, brake till the apex. There's a pretty thin range of yaw rates where the inside rear unloads enough to allow decent rotation, the key to cornering is to keep that weight transfer state long enough.
-As usual - big smooth steering input arcs, but be ready to dial in some opposite lock, especially when adding power.
-Apex later than you think, to be able to got WOT sooner.
-AS SOON AS you're off the brakes add some throttle, 30-40% usually, and then keep adding. Quick people are mostly quick in how they go on throttle. Do not go WOT until the rear end has settled.
-Some people drag a bit of throttle in corners all the time. Supposedly this is what you do in cars with spool instead of a diff, not sure.
-Must use in-car swaybar adjustments during the race, cannot just load a set and go the whole race. The rear end rises as fuel gets spent, making it oversteer, tires car wear unevenly, having effects both ways.
The biggest V8 series downfall (for us in NA) is that it's hugely popular down under and not very popular up here. So most high-SOF splits are ran on Aussie servers, with pretty big lag and huge potential for netcode bumps that will ruin races.
That said, checkout this league:
http://grasim.freeforums.net/
Runs on Tuesday nights at 8 EST.
TL-DR: to turn in this car you have to keep the inside rear tire unloaded enough so that it slips. Doing so takes precision, and lots of seat time to build muscle memory.