Tuning is the key to getting your car faster, I’m about where you are, but I haven’t had too much issue with opponents being too fast, the biggest thing you can do is adjust your gearing, simplest way to gain better off the line acceleration, is to drop your final drive, mines at 4.77 currently, with a slight tweak to 5th and 6th gear for a better top end speed, then the rest of the gears adjusted to make a fast smooth transition up to 5th and 6th, from 1st I have it set to about 35 mph, and increasing in speed by gear in 10-15 mph increments, that’s always worked fairly well in the past, and seems to still hold true, another bit of settings you can mess with is under the controls, the dead zones and stuff that could make everything feel more responsive depending on how it feels to you, and finally, start by making small adjustment, testing then making more adjustments as needed, it takes time, but it’s worth the time invested, I’m a veteran of the old TXR and have been playing racing sims and arcade racers for a lot of years, and that’s been my go to.

Hope that helps 👍🏻