I finally bought the premium pack on the current sale, and have been playing it quite a bit. It has, and I think will going forward, be my main sim, as it does almost everything very well, to excellent. My only issues, which I've seen posted about here and there in searches, are the AI pitting me, be it slamming into my rear in a braking zone, or doing a dive into my side when I'm ahead and turning in, and of course when this happens, the AI drives on as nothing happened, yet I spin out. Pretty frustrating in an otherwise amazing game. Just a quick example, I was qualifying and racing P2's at Spa, and if there was an AI around me going into the last chicane, it would drill me when I'd brake. If I stop any later, I'd miss the turn. They also just don't seem to have any awareness of the vortex of danger, and cut right into my side, as I'm ahead, taking a line, and they just take a high speed inside cut. Anyway, hopefully the AI will receive a little tweak eventually. They are very fun to race wheel to wheel with, but I dread certain situations where I know they're going to slam me.
Getting the AI level set correctly for your speed is quite important in getting decent racing against the AI. On the whole they work well but there are a few car/track combinations which need some work. For an "average" sim racer you would be looking at somewhere between 100 and 106 for the AI strength.
Maybe there's an issue with your brakes? Do they reach 100% in the game? Turn on input meter and check it out.
Yeah, I think the comments are correct, I tweaked brake pressure and bias (Mistral M531 still locks, but better), and was able to brake later than I thought on a couple of turns at Spa, got a 2:15 on the leaderboards challenge (which seems to be a better way to practice than practice mode), and hit 2:14 a couple of laps in a race with 95 AI and came in first, not great or anything, but I'm not that good anyway, heh. So a combination of settings and the adaptive AI I've been using must still be set way too high overall, because 95 was much, much easier (little too easy). Adaptive AI was easy for the first several races, but has put almost everything out of reach since then. I'll probably just set the AI to 100 and see how that goes, thanks.