Totally agree on everything you've said there. But that is the beuty of the game! Sure, stock challenge is super fun, and i will defintely get stuck into this too; but it is in the nature of the game to modify your vehicle. From the beggining with GT4, i was into the whole stock thing, mild tuning with the sports tyres - but having the ability to change the whole dynamics of the car, and to be in that 'ALL OUT' class might not be as or more challenging than with sports tyres to drive, but then again, it is not THAT easy to drive to get the best possible time out of it.
The purpose of adjusting the setup for myself, was to achieve a fast lap time without having the trouble of oversteering when braking hard, understeering on corner entry/exit or having too much drag on the short straigt on Tsukuba and to compare how much time difference there is between setups. ie. having the perfect balanced car - but then again, it is not so easy to drive to try and better your time over and over again. It takes a long time to adjust!
But this is the beuty....so many categories you can split this game up into, and they're all great!
Keep this up i rekon! This can be entertaining for a lot more hours to come.........
Oh, BTW - I use a standard controller to answer the question on a previous post.