Please share combos and settings (aggression, etc.) you are using for great offline races.
Interesting...your two points above seem to be contradictory?
Personally, I don't think AI will ever be as fast as drivers at least in my lifetime (not long lol) and this is doubly true if any decent driver actually concentrates on a track even a little bit even with practice only (i.e. not setup testing or data analysis) and even with default setup and even default fuel.
Maybe I should say that differently... I have never had expectations that AI would ever keep up with me with any setup testing beyond simply balancing the vehicle and certainly not data analysis, etc. which I never do.
What I think is reasonable is for the AI to be able to challenge the average mid pack league racer for at least long enough to practice accident avoidance, awareness, etc. for a league race, for example.
In my experience AI is rarely good enough at 100% even for the beginning stages of this let alone any serious time in any combo which is why I have to rotate content so much offline but that is OK and also why leagues are so important for people like me who want to focus on a single vehicle and a single combo for any amount of time.
I think we are actually agreeing because I'm saying that I don't expect 100% to be fast enough and you guys are saying 100% should theoretically be fast enough but never is without specific tuning of everything for a specific combo.