I don’t think you’ve gotten a single piece of bad advice here, but I’m nonetheless curious: are online opponents beating you outright? Cleanly? Or is it more along the lines of them out-dragging you on the straights and losing whatever gap they build in turns? Because if it’s the latter, I wouldn’t call that outright better. A lot of players have builds that best mine on the straights, but come turn time, they’re either cutting corners to the extreme or getting assists from the wall/other players. Often, that’s due to an unstable build/tune that’s competitive only in the sense that it creates too much mayhem for others to pass or defend against. Even in clean races and contactless rooms, I’ve lost to cars that despite a flagrant inability to handle the full spectrum of course challenges, are such missiles on straights that it’d take a Top-100 drive in a proven build/tune to win against them. And frankly, I don’t really worry about trying to match that kind of opposition anymore.
The only suggestion I can add to the conversation is to work with cars that are at least at the bottom of the class so that you’ll have some PI margin for upgrades. Showing up in an A800 room with a BMW M4 or Q50 Eau Rouge is usually asking to get stomped by all but the very worst drivers. A stock car at or near the class ceiling is only comparable to another stock car; a half-decent custom build will blow it out, and a good tune will make the beating worse still.
A final thought on vehicle selection. I typically compete in A class, and other than the customary leaderboard fodder of rally rockets, many of the good players I’ve come across use classic sport or muscle cars. Most offer the potential of being relatively lightweight and easy to make power-dense if they’re not already, but may require a fair amount of tuning prowess to ‘modernize’ their handling performance.
