I've noticed that a "good" set-up will be a good starting point for any of the cars. I've taken McLaren set-ups designed for Time Trial and put them on my Lotus in season racing with success. I usually only have to play with the gear ratios. When I have to adjust other settings it's usually only one click up or down.
I had 1-11 dry with little rain than it started to rain so I went for intermediate tyres, than around 22nd lap it become dryier so i swapped to Prime, and only becouse of flat tire in slowest corner on my pit lap I did not win race.
Used standard middle setup for race and same for qually taht was wet with time 1.22.7xx for pole (1.21.xxx race lap finished 4th)
Lotus 1st season
ok, I stopped at 1:14.804 no assists cockpit view. Can you see the exact 1:14.6xx time in ps3? . Also I think that ps3 user have assists on? Earlier I saw a ps3 leaderboard and almost all ps3 users had assists on.
I drove some more laps and finally found a nice setup for wet tt at least. 1:14.681 in cockpit view no assists. But that was with a fail sector 1, the lap after this I got -0.079 on sector 1, the rest of the lap will be hard to beat though.