With practice you could compete with ds4. If you're having trouble with throttle control, just keep tcs at 2. I did sport mode races with the controller when I was too lazy to set up the wheel. Managed a win and 2nd with the rest being midpack finishes.
It was cool. You can do it too I'm sure.
I've won my first race against on the B/S tier not because I was the fastest on track but because I was the most consistent. The 3 in front did mistakes and I didn't so I won. I was always behind them (1 - 2 seconds on Lake Maggiore Gr.4) but when they went off track, I overtook them.
Dont race in Sport Mode for decent competition. Find a group of regulars to race with in public or private lobbies. Much better racing when you can control who races with you. I could care less about driver or sport rating. Means nothing.
Don't beat yourself down mate. I know it's hard to win but you can't give up too easily. I've only had three wins so far, and I lose the majority of my races. That's just what racing is.
But I wonder why they move me up a rank so fast, it would have been fun to set a pole once or win a race in DR E before I got promoted to DR D. There is a whole bar of achievements for Sport mode and the only thing that's filling up is number of races, all the rest is at zero. 
I bought PSN+ today and started playing my first Sport races. Jumped into the Audi TTS N300 at Kyoto reverse without any qualifying but I didn't like that car's slippery tyres that much so I finished the race and moved to the Gr.4 race at Maggiore reverse. That one is a lot of fun so been repeatedly doing that one.
I started with the default DR E in my WRX Gr.4 and was not doing bad, set a lousy qualifying time of 2:22 or something and I had some struggling races to get used to the car and the track. Swapped to my Scirocco Gr.4 and I did better, set a new qualifying time of 2:20 or something. Some more races where I usually started and finished between 2nd and 6th or so. I hopped into my F-Type Gr.4 and set a 2:17 from 1 try. I thought I would now be able to start at pole once since most people in my groups have been doing poles with a time near that. And then suddenly I move up to D ranking, duh, why?
Now the most important thing are fun races and that is absolutely what I experienced today, I'm having an absolute blast in that Jag Gr.4.
Is there a way to influence the groups you are formed with? Should I deliberately set a qualifying time where I'm performing sub par?
But alas, for the moment just concentrating on having fun. Going to give those Gr.3 races at Suzuka a try now since they seem to require tyre and fuel strategy.
If the matchmaking works perfectly it should operate on several levels. People who win more often should be pitted against better and better competition regardless of their Q time, that's how you help prevent sandbagging. People who win less often should go into weaker and weaker lobbies. I also think Q times shold be updated if you run faster laps in the race to also prevent sandbagging the Q times.Well that is more or less the problem in D for me, I cannot win here but I always do finish in the top half of the time table. Heck even after a reckless spin in turn 1 and ending up last I could still fight back to 8th I think it was. That now seems to be my case in DR D, there are still more people below my level but always a few higher as well. At this rate I for sure will not drop to E again, more likely get promoted further to C (which I don't want... yet). But I certainly don't want to start deliberately finish last to drop a rank, that's just lame. Besides those fights from last towards the first half of the table are fun as well.
I don't know how those match makings work but I hope that at some point it will be possible to win. If the match making is 100% perfect then you would always finish at the middle of the time table as well.
Yeah good point, that’s possible. Since this is my first day of playing online there is not much data on me yet.
Did 1Gr.3 at Suzuka with my DR D and I started 17/20 and finished 15/16, pffft. I did get SR S though for being so nice and hanging in there. 
A small obstacle to overcome. The most you could gain in racing conditions by drafting is measured in tenths, likely less than 5. Just make the laptime only update if you gain a half second or more although, IMO, this is a very minor concern.
5 tenths is huge when youre nearing top times. Sorry but its a terrible idea. People could purposely give eachother a tow in attempt to get times not possible on your own.
That's why you use a 0.5 buffer before adjusting someone's times. Why would anyone want to artificially decrease their lap time to a level they could never get to on their own? It's totally counter productive. If push comes to shove I'd rather take a chance at giving someone a half second drop in laptimes due to the draft than have to race against guys that sandbagged by 3 or 4 seconds any day.
