I'll see if I can get together with you guys this weekend, icelt.
I went online last night for the first time in a few months - it was a very disillusioning experience. It seems to be far inferior to GT5P online (which, of course, isn't that great itself): the movements of the other cars seem very jerky/laggy; there's an absurd amount of tire marks & smoke, which is very distracting; the relative sound of the cars is unbalanced, quite unlike offline (where it works very well); the handling of the cars seems quite different from offline. The result of all this was that I had no idea what I was doing & ended up driving like a complete noob.
Any of you guys play online a lot & feel quite comfortable with it?