It's especially hilarious that the fastest way to complete the start/stop tests was to lock up the brakes and turn the car 90 degrees while doing. Great thing to teach the kiddies and noobs about how to be a safe and courteous online competitor.
Even better, GT5 had quite a few of those tests that were like the 3 lap magic special events in GT4, or sections of tracks where you pass multiple drivers. Those (excluding the rally tests in every game and
possibly the Super Licences of every game) are the only ones in the series that really ever taught me anything about the
physics of whatever game I happened to be playing.
Safe passing. Drafting to make up speed deficits. What is a safe overtake and what is possibly too dangerous to try. How hard you can push a car and keep it under control in an actual race setting. All stuff that could be very useful in an online game, even if the AI is idiotic.
That is a legitimately difficult event that takes quite a lot of actual learned skill application to complete. That's an event that I know was useful when I raced online in that track (which was rare, but did happen). That was an event that I pulled my hair out over, but was proud of my achievement when I got gold because I knew I learned the track and the car better. I lost my save in a PS3 HDD crash about 4 months after launch, and the second time around I was breezing through everything but I was dreading that event.
So of course, you have to imagine my amazement when there was a several patch period between the game's launch and Spec II where they
shut off the failure condition if you hit the AI drivers, no matter how hard you speared them. You can also likely imagine how difficult the test was then.
At worst, it's a nice and structured way to get to grips with the new physics model, while testing out a wide variety of cars & tracks quickly.
That's not even
close to "at worst". Rally tests teach you things. Overtaking licences teach you things. Super licences can teach you things. Overviews of extremely technical courses or sections of courses can teach you things. GT4 actually was pretty decent with that last one.
"What is the exact speed I need to hit when I hit the brakes to get a gold and get this stupid thing done with" doesn't teach you anything, and "this damn car is so slow all you need to do is stay on the throttle and hug the inside line of this single turn" doesn't teach you anything; and that's probably half of the typical B-Licence block of a typical GT game right there.