The fastest way to drive in this game is to tune for all power and turn on all the assists besides assisted steering and braking. Then you have unlimited power and you can just rotate your car into the corners with AWD and stop the slide with TCS.

Online in this game is no fun allowed. RWD will not work. Race tires will not work below S2. Unless you spend a lot of time learning the lame OA meta, you're gonna keep getting flamed. The balance is not there and there is no other way to compete at the top levels. I'm pretty fast, I drive most of the time RWD or FWD and I'm top 1% on most of the single-player leaderboards, but online is a nasty place for tryhards in minmaxed gripless exploit cars.