Good spot! Yep, it's well known that's a big issue. So much so Shovas devoted a boatload of time to tweaking every track's RaceRatio value in the AIW files for default content GTR2 tracks to fix exactly this problem. See this mod (and read its README for LOTS more information)Hey guys, I think that for me the biggest AI problem is the difference in laptimes beyween quali and race, I always race with the base setup so that I don't have any advantage over them but when I qualify 10th I can still win the race. Have you got any ideas about what would be a better ratio to use in the track files?
SHO Competition AI
SHO Competition AI is a mod for original content GTR2 cars and tracks that modifies various AI-related configuration parameters to achieve more realistic race performance by AI drivers resulting in more realistic, tighter, and more intense...
www.racedepartment.com
It would be feasible to do this for RACE 07 as well, but first you need to choose your preferred values for all those parameters Speednut was discussing in the PLR, RCD, HDC etc files. Because your tweaked RaceRatio value for one set of other parameters might yield different quali vs race performance than with another parameter set.
Optimizing RaceRatio values is definitely something that should be done! Would be a fantastic mod. But first job needs to be to get the general AI racing behaviour as good as possible using parameter tweaks in those other files.