So I've had a go with the game since it's the free weekend.
The unfortunate truth that will put people off is the fact that the game is not plug and play. You will have to fiddle with the force feedback settings both in the options menu and in the car setup menu.
Once you get things dialed in you will go from thinking "wow this is an untested mess, how did they release this" to "okay this feels pretty good actually, I'm having fun now".
I'm using a Thrustmaster T150. Thing is ancient at this point and I've gone through great lengths to keep it alive, but it gets the job done. Max FFB level in the wheel's software is set to 75%. I've reduced the steering angle from 1080 to 900.
Here are the settings I've ended up using for the game:
The base settings had no vibrations at all, a totally floaty, boaty, disconnected mess. There need to be presets to choose from in the setup wizard and in this menu. These levels gave me the necessary amount of feedback to make the cars actually feel in my control, somewhat, I'll get to that later.
As for per-car settings, I ended up setting the steering rack ratio to 1.5, and setting the steering stiffness to the max, with the steering damping set to the lowest setting.
This seems to give me the most direct connection to the road, but the floatyness doesn't really go away fully. To counter this somewhat, I would go with more toe in in the rear, and more downforce.
The rear end of all cars feels like it's sliding out while cornering, more than it should. No car feels "planted" as much as I'd expect. This changes drastically with tire pressure levels, but there doesn't seem to be a perfect level of pressure to make that floaty feeling go away.
One more thing to note is that there is no physical feedback for understeer at all, you can hear it but not feel it, idk if that's how it's supposed to be but there you go.
Overall I think the physics can be tweaked and improved, the groundwork is there, it just needs fine tuning and tons of testing on many different wheels. Oh, and please set "steer look" in the cockpit settings to 0.
AS FOR THE AI: They still use sticky physics. This is not realistic, it is absurd, and needs to be changed immediately. They use an entirely different grip model to keep themselves on the track. Get. Rid. Of. It.