The Mach e is not a top peed monster, but what it is is shockingly good at the corners...and acceleration (the latter being expected, the former ain't)
I gave it a try for some races in custom mode and did extremely good times, top 50 overall for several events, and I imagine a lot of the times above me were done by people slipstreaming in a convoy. One race I tried it for was Touge Spirit in the Made in Japan playlist, as I thought what you described would be great for that, and I was 6 seconds quicker than with the Audi or Porsche. I think Ryno had 4th on the leaderboard with it for that event. The Audi still has the top spot, and I can only think that is with 1) slipstream and 2) manual with clutch hack, as the gear shifts are so slow that I can't see any other way it can match the Mach e, as the Mach e saves so much time in between corners due to the lack of shifting.
I also tried it for Wangan Spirit, which it should be worse for due to how much of it is done at high speed, but even for that I was top 100 as it gets up to its limited top speed so fast after each bit that drops the speed down.
I just discovered this website via someone mentioning it in Discord, it shows the upcoming grand race schedule, which is incredibly useful if you like, for example, no collision races without any off-road sections. It also has a link to a map that shows the treasure locations.
07/02, 19:30 | New Wailea | Racing > Street Tier 1 > Hypercar | No Collisions |
I might try the Mach e in that!
Edit: Okay, 19:30 came, and the Mach-E was basically pay to win for the fairly technical second leg, I built up a significant lead from having 2 other cars close to me at the end of the first leg. Bear in mind they would have had slipstream with each other all the way for 2/3rds of the race, vs me driving solo at the front, but they were still over 3 seconds behind me. So, if you have the car, enjoy it for the next few days before everyone has it. It's so good for repeated acceleration that it's going to make choosing the right car for the specific route extremely important in grand races from now on.