Do not do the transmission flip on this car. It completely robs it of all torque. 172 HP just isn't enough to pull 2nd and 3rd gears using the transmission flip.
I did a reverse transmission flip and the car accelerates much better.
Final gear 2.500
Max Speed 124 (do not change this again)
1st gear 4.550
2nd gear 3.000
3rd gear 2.260
4th gear 1.825
5th gear 1.550
Final gear 2.000
I got gold pretty easily using these transmission settings and the default suspension tune. The car currently is near topping out at the end of the straights, so as soon as I start tuning the suspension and pick up corner speeds, I may need to reset the trans. If I do get the car to over the rev limiter, I will start working the final gear starting point up 50 points at a time.
The default tune isn't bad. It has a bit of mid corner push and once you get some grunt out of 2nd gear, you can spin the outside rear tire on exit. I will start by lowering the LSD Accel a bit. If you are not planning to spend much time with this event, these changes may be all you are interested in doing. Get gold and move on.
My full tune will be coming later.
I got down to a 1:29.089 by my own devices and suspension tune. This immediately dropped me down to a 1:27.8, and a gold. Lots of time to be found in exploiting the torque band of this car.