Well, first of all, I think Racing drivers are egos covered in a racing suit and helmet. They're proud things and wouldn't copy a setup just like that.
Secondly, it's not even the pilots who actually decide on the setup. Most of these tracks have been ran on for years and years. Most teams have incalculable amounts of data on them and have been setting cars up for them for a long time, they know what to do. Then the pilot takes the car out on friday, already with a basic setup for the track and comes back, talks to the engineer about how the car's feeling, look at telemetry together (and telemetry is something that's VERY missing in this game), discuss what has to be changed; what's called 'fine tuning'. It's just silly to go into a race weekend and have to start up from the ground up like your team has never seen this track before.
It would be a lot more realistic if you arrived at friday practice and your engineer told you "Okay we got the car set up for the dry, take it out and tell us how it feels" then you come back and start fine tuning the details to your driving style.
And about the engineer talking to you, I just found it frustrating that they recorded like only a dozen things he says to you over and over and over. By the 3rd race you've heard it all. You'd think in a game that eats up like 8 GB of your hard drive they'd have put a little more variety.