If you have TCS on you can just mash it 
if you have it off it depends on the car. I usually run some hot laps in rivals lots of starts and stops to get a feel for each car. Hope that helps!
Generally, if you’re using the auto-upgrade the build isn’t as good as if you manually build the car. You normally want all the handling parts, all drivetrain and race tyres. But the guy in the S2K, he may have had his car built with lots of power.
Also who do you think will win? The guy who has spent a week tweaking his car to get the most out of it? or the guy who pressed auto upgrade?
I can also tell you that there are plenty of drivers out there who can turn up in a stock car that is way off max PI who will beat you even if you are in the best tune for the fastest car. There is always someone out there faster than you.
Don’t worry. This is one if the hardest multiplayers out there. You’ll run into people running consistent laps that are ranked around #100 at times. Its insanely competitive at times.
Keep your car on the track and try not to hit others and you’ll find that better finishes will happen even if you are far from the fastest.
Also, please use at least manual in C class. You’ll get torched no matter what car you’re in with automatic. That’s partly why you are getting blown on the straights. You get an acceleration boost for each upshift with manual and manual with clutch.
Hmmm, maybe I should go back to automatic??? 
Oh, one more thing… If you want to get good, don’t be shy about being annoying. This forum is excellent. I annoyed the people here with countless questions until I started to figure things out. They put up with me and helped me tremendously. Be very specific about things and you’ll get much better help though.
Practice is the only way, rivals events are better than career mode to practice as you can seen the ghost and the lines they take. i would also probably not race C class. maybe A class.
As you learn ur cars and start tuning urself you will quickly find what settings actually work for your driving style. My style is very aggressive (according to my friends) and thus I have found my tuning is in some extreme settings sometimes (especially my springs) just for me to drive how I want to.
As for who said no one can tune quickly that’s only partially true. You can tune quickly if you know ur driving style to get ur car close to where it needs to be. Fine tuning might take a extra day or two but in most cases you can have ur car built how you want in less then an hour or two.
I dont care for racing online in public lobbys. The majority of the poeple(skilled and average) drive with that darn braking line on, run arcade steering and they never screw up. Aside from player collisions. Its not as fun. Granted I’ll admit that I am an average driver, but I run with a wheel sim steering 900(aside from indy cars and such). Man with clutch makes a difference along with the proper car, tune and car setup of course.
So I feel your pain OP:-)
Arcade steering? Lol. You obviously have no idea what you’re talking about. Rarely do people drive without mistakes, else it would be impossible to catch up.
Its a lot easier not to stuff up if your running braking line and normal steering. My guess about 4 times more.
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With the line, maybe. Sim steering is just pointless online unless you really like violently losing control from slight contact. Its a mess on the controller with the completely random spin outs at times. Thankfully they got normal steering feeling a lot like sim from the last game.
Okay I stand corrected. The steering mode that gives you full contol but dampens certain physical effects to make driving easier. That one
Also I was kinda refering to braking way to early or late, and hitting the grass. Far less likey if you have the brake line on.
That just my perspective.
Like everyone has been saying, you don’t get to carnegie hall by playing a song 20 times… try playing it 2000 times
You can also decide what your personal goals are, independent of other drivers’ abilities. I’m having a blast, 25K miles in but I measure my rank by percentage (top 20% on a bunch of track/class combos, but usually more like top 50% and still plenty of top 70%).
The advice you’re getting is solid. Turning off assists is a big help, but can take tons of practice. I’ve got roughly 15K miles with assisted braking off, and rarely set a personal best without it. If you just want to have fun and relax for a while, feel free to do so. Hours of learning to drive without assists can be nerve wracking. Usually I’ll decompress by running career-mode with drivatars on Unbeatable (though I hear when you’re top-100 the Unbeatable is also super easy). Sometimes I’ll just go blow off steam in the Tag lobbies. On rare occasions I’ll decompress by driving with assisted braking, automatic, and TCS+STM - but typically just for a quick reality check on a newb’s tune: adding assists, especially assisted braking, can sabotage my learning curve.
I like going after the in-game and Gamerscore achievements (95% yay!) so I’ve paid more attention to what the game is trying to focus me on. Multiplayer has very few achievements contingent on taking Gold. Most of them, a medal is a medal; Bronze is as good as Gold. Not that it isn’t a challenge. If there are 10 racers in a lobby on a track I know pretty well, I’m fighting for that last bronze - and usually missing it. (Actually if there are 5+ racers I’m fighting the 45-second clock, and getting DNF at least half the time.) It seems to take me about 2000 miles to get a track dialed in where I can get a Bronze or Silver more than half the time.
But in the Multiplayer tracks I’m always trying to focus and to do my best: I owe it to the other racers, most of whom are better and teach me what they can when they can. The place I have the most fun in Multiplayer is always the long races: the sense of urgency may still be there for a lot of the racers, but there’s also an affinity to the notion that we’re all trying to run this race together. A driver might still hit me on lap 2 (and 10, and 15) but one they realize I’m doing my best to drive around them clean, most will try and do the same.
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BullElky
My best advice would be to treat your controller like an egg. Be very gentle and smooth in everything you do. When braking if you dont use abs you only really end up using maybe 50% of the trigger pull. On the bottom right of the screen you will see braking/gas meters. If you push the brake and that bar fills up 100% you are probably braking to hard to begin with. Once you have learned how to brake correctly you will be able to use the whole bar with increasingly steady trigger pull with out locking up the brakes. Same goes for the gas, if you are hitting the gas mid corner and you see that bar go all they way up you are hitting the gas to hard. Be gentle getting on the gas and it will help with corner exit speed. Less throttle on mid corner usually means more speed on corner exit which will give you more speed for the whole straight away. When downloading cars i would recommend getting tunes from trusted builders first and once you get more experience than you can go in and experiment with people you have never heard of. If you go into the tuning section you will find a lot of good tuners in there and alot of info on how tuning works. Tuning is a very confusing thing starting off so dont feel down if you get confused. Everybody that has answered you in here was a noob at some point and got help from somebody at some point. Now its our turn to return the favor. Im more than willing to jump into a party with you and give you some pointers and some open sourced tunes so you can play with the setting instead of them being locked.
We help those that ask questions so please keep asking!
ERS JOHNSON
Good post mate. It’s nice to see people like this still around. People should take your advice and offer,and learn from it/you. It would probably make lobby racing better in the long run if people took advice from more experienced people. I feel half the time people know they are not quick and are not going to win. So they wreck you instead.
OP: Check where you are on the leaderboards. If you want to consistently medal (note, I said medal, not win) you need to be in the top 1-2 % range. There is always some variation in lobbies (I’ve had some where I can win, others where I don’t stand a chance at getting a medal), but, you need to be where I said to consistently medal.
I think a lot of newer players have difficulty understanding that. They see that they are top 5% on a track and think “Hey, that’s pretty good. That’s like an A in school, right?” But, the reality is that MP is stacked with the high end of the deck. Top 5% won’t consistently get you a medal.
Also, in MP races, consistency is important. Somebody might be faster than you but if they are reckless, they will usually crash eventually. Just do your thing and stay out of their way. That’s usually good for a couple of spots.
AX
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Do the pass the tag virus event it only lasts 5 minutes and your chances of getting a metal is very high. If the regular tag virus had a time limit I would recommend that also but in its current state its broke since it has no time limit and in most events there are people that cheat and go outside of the map. I’m very close to getting the 325 online metals achievement almost 70% done a good chunk of the rest of that will probably be done in pass the tag virus mode.