Nobody else on this thread has mentioned (though you may know this, in which case plz forgive), matchmaking is LINE UP (not VEHICLE) specific. I.e., the match-making is done not by the BR of your PLANE but by the BR of your overall LINE UP that you take into battle.

Further explanation, if necessary: all the BRs from your line up are weirdly Gaijin-averaged (which is sort-of taken from the median, not the mean, of the top three vehicles) and then those averages are matched into battle by being restricted to a range of 1.0 BR. So, you have to (a) manage your line up so that all vehicles are within a very small range of one another (keeping Gaijin-averaging in mind), and then you have to (b) suffer the fact that your line up may be uptiered for the battle. Hence, a good line-up with Gaijin-average BR 2.3 (f.e. 2.7 + 2.3 + 2.0 + 2.0) can very easily enter a battle which pits your 2.0s against a 3.7 (battle ranges 2.3-to-3.3 line ups, with the 3.7 as part of a 3.3 line up and your 2.0 as part of your 2.3 line up). The width of that discrepancy from your 2.0 to his 3.7 -- a full 1 and 2/3 BRs -- is very prohibitive at certain levels, despite the fact that you've probably maximized your own line up's effectiveness by choosing best vehicle complements.

You did all you could, but he seems to overpower you anyway, right? Well, yeah ... it's not just you. At various levels in certain arrangements of Gaijin, we all feel that way, sometimes.

PS -- I think the P-36 sucks, unless played extremely rigorously, properly. In typical Arcade and newbie-Realistic turnfights, it should get eaten easily by Italian biplanes, as long as you bait the opposing pilot into misusing it. Recognize your strengths, get him to play whirligig instead of boom and zoom.