Don't do anything with the damage, it will just result in more careless driving and contact. The game isn't perfect. Oh well. :-)
That actually shows little faith in the drivers you have here. High damage settings will not, and should not force cautious behaviour.
The damage model is faulty and way too exaggerated, and all it does now, is penalize small nudges which shouldn't cause any effect. Nudges that wouldn't get a penalty in the official way. The whole penalty system should cause people to drive carefully. In GTR2 and GTL the damage model was quite forgiving, but I didn't see banger racing back then.
Wish we could do warm up laps and use the clutch on starts. I thought they added that a while back? Not to multiplayer?
I think they added false starts in multiplayer, and seeing as we aren't using PLP, I think it is just a matter of switching it on? I don't want a warm up lap tho, the cold tyre starts give some spice. It's very tricky, especially without ABS, but we should all be aware of it.
I was knocked off track at turn one (from third place)
You might wanna check the replay
. I don't see anybody knocking you off in this screenshot
And this was the finish