Currently the cross country events are impossible for me on any of the higher difficulty settings. The dirt racing series has some of these issues, but to a much lesser extent. Road based events I run on either Pro or Unbeatable difficulty, but in a cross country event, at these difficulty settings, my observation is that the AI does not get slowed down by either landing from a jump, or by going uphill. Both of these things, obviously, have a major impact on my own speed, so I don’t understand how you’re supposed to be competitive against the AI on these courses.
This is using stock tunes on any valid vehicle for a given championship. It does not matter at all what car I use. I suspect that the added performance score from upgrading all of the drivetrain to tunable components would offset any benefit I would manage to derive from a custom tune on the vehicle.
So the question is, what gives?