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I think you're overlooking the fact that a lot, probably the majority of people, are in the same boat as you and are just using whatever setup they find first. And yeah for those people there should be at least one BoP, locked setup race, because anybody who doesn't understand how to make a setup or is worried that their setup isn't as fast as someone else's, are going to just play it safe and use the same setup that everyone is using, in which you might as well just lock everything down.
I think this conversation is more and more turning into "people are going to use the meta regardless of whether BoP/setups are locked/unlocked, so might as well just lock everything down so it's quicker/easier to find and use the meta". When BoP and setups for this race were locked, everyone bought the VW VGT because that was meta. If it turned out a day later that actually the fastest car was something else, you all would have bought that car as well.
Someone said earlier that you could be competitive with your favourite car on any track in GT Sport. Well first of all, try and tell that to Z4 fans. And secondly, almost no one, especially in higher rank lobbies, did that if they found that their favourite car didn't have enough straight line speed, or had too much understeer on a particular track. We all want competitive racing, but more than that, almost everyone wants to give themselves the best chance of doing well in a race. Which is why they are going to use whatever car is most popular in the top 10, and it's why a lot of people are anti-setups, because they're worried that they are missing out on the mythical OP setup that every youtube video thumbnail promises will make them faster than Valerio Gallo AND increase your sexual appeal.
For me personally BoP/setup locked races are a bit stale after however many years it was of GT Sport, which is why I'm more interested in these open style races at the moment, but I still see value in having one or two locked races a week. I just think there's way too much hyperbole and mistrust of these open style races. The people saying that they will boycott any race that doesn't have BoP enabled, I can't help but feel that they haven't actually tried racing in these lobbies because so far my experience has been that it's very easy to get in a competitive car and have just as much fun as I did in GT Sport.
Finally I will say that from what I've observed so far, it's the races that are halfway between locked and open that have the most strict meta at the moment. BoP races with open setups are probably the worst of both worlds, if you can't change power and weight then there simply has to be a car that's better than everything else once you've ironed out whatever deficiencies the default setup has in the corners.
They still don't seem to be able to pick a competitive roster of cars for Daily Race A either, there must be a track and car combination that can make it work, maybe Sophy would be able to help find it. At Goodwood Revival they often have these 'David vs Goliath' races where you get lower powered, lightweight cars and put them against higher powered, but heavier cars. Despite all the support I've given for open tuned/setup races, I would love to see a locked down race between wildly different cars on a tight technical course like Tsukuba or Goodwood.
Apologies for the essay.
