This was probably already addressed but I CBA to read the whole thread at the moment. But, you actually described exactly why fixed setups are a true test of driver skill. A truly skilled and well-rounded driver can jump into any car with any setup and be quick with just a bit of practice. Adapting your driving style to a particular car is much more of a challenge than adapting a car's settings to your driving style. So in the scenario you describe with the ROC, the best driver is the one who is able to adapt to a variety of different cars quickly and be fast in all of them, which is exactly the point of the ROC. It's not about seeing how is fastest with their preferred setup, it's about who's able to adapt the quickest to any random car with any random setup. A driver who can be the fastest in all three of the ROC cars deserves to be the champion, but a driver who can only be fast in those cars when it has a preferred setup does not deserve to be the champion.
When I hosted GT5/6 clubs/races I always used the "no tuning" option, for a variety of reasons. For one, it made it easier for someone to just grab the car and jump in at the last minute without having to worry about other people being way faster because they had spent a dozen hours testing and tuning the car. I wanted it to be about who was the best driver, not who had the most time during the week to perfect their tune. Another reason was that it made us more versatile drivers. After racing several cars with their default setups I learned to be able to feel the nuances of each car and adapt to them, and before long I could jump in any car and adapt to it within a few laps and be quick. I firmly believe that time spent behind the wheel makes you a better and more well-rounded driver than spending time in the tuning garage. You can often make a greater improvement on your lap time by adjusting your driving technique or your corner entry than you can by adjusting a suspension setting. And you can apply that technique to a just about any car on just about any track, without ever touching a spanner.
But we all have our own likes and desires, forced default setups happen to be my preference but that doesn't mean it has to be everyone's preference. As long as they allow us the option to enforce a default setup or allow full tuning, then everyone is happy.
Being able to adjust your driving to suit a car's characteristics isn't anything special, it's just called being able to drive. Road cars aren't set up to each driver's preferences, so to learn to drive, you learn to feel what the car is doing, and adapt accordingly. Any race driver can adapt their style to a car that doesn't suit their preferences, but you'll always be quicker if the car is adjusted to suit how you drive, otherwise there would be no point in having adjustable suspension or diffs or anything in a race car.
If elite drivers could just drive any set up as quickly as any other, they wouldn't bother setting the car up at all would they? Spec series' like NASCAR and GP2/3 wouldn't allow set up changes if it made things equal, as it's be cheaper, and the point of a spec series is low costs and equal racing.
The reason RoC doesn't allow set up changes has nothing to do with leveling the playing field. The reason they don't allow it is because each driver would have to have significant practice time to find their set up, and having every driver practice and set up the car before each run would take forever.
Romain Grosjean won RoC on his first attempt, beating Michael Schumacher and Sebastian Vettel to the crown, but in F1 that year he was beaten by Kimi Raikkonen in the same car. Now this year Kimi can hardly get within a second of Vettel in the same car. Going by your theory, Grosjean should be the best driver of the three having won RoC, but he isn't anywhere near as quick as Vettel in F1, considering he is at best close to Raikkonen. If winning in a car you can't set up makes you better, he should be heaps better once he's able to set the car up.
The fact is, anyone can adapt their driving to suit cars and set ups that don't suit them, but they will always be faster when the car and/or set up does suit them. That's why having one set up for everyone can favour some drivers better than others, meaning it's not a perfectly level playing field like you're claiming. One driver may find it suits them fine, while another has to adapt to it, and while the one adapting might be able to get used to it, they won't be as quick as if they didn't have to adapt.
The best race drivers in the world would all prefer a car set up to their driving style than having to adapt to a car that feels foreign to them. You only have to watch any top tier motorsport to see this, so I don't see why it's even being debated.
Again, I'm not against having the option in game, as it is good for people that don't want to spend tons of time setting the car up, as you rightly point out, some people will have more time to spend on set ups than others, and some will have more knowledge of setting cars up than others. In this scenario, having free set ups can be unfair to the people who don't have the time and/or knowledge to set their car up. However, if you have a series where everyone is serious about winning and have the time to spend on set ups, it would be unfair to prevent them from adjusting the car to suit them.
Learning how to set up a car will teach you how to feel what the car is doing underneath you. You'll learn what changing suspension settings does to the feel of the car, as well as diff, alignment, aero, etc. Learning how to set up a car will definitely give you a better feel for the car.
Anyway, I'm not arguing about this anymore as it's off topic. If you want to discuss it feel free to pm me. Nothing I've said here is anything new, it's common knowledge in racing circles, and the reason I'm saving up for new adjustable coilovers for my car, since I don't have my track car anymore to play around with.
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