cars from your own garage based on either performance points or horsepower (usually performance points) or from the recommended selection (ie like in the solo player in arcade mode you can choose cars you don't own but won't be tuned... then it's a simple lap based race... there's shuffle racing which is more 'fair' but populated by the type of players who you'd rather hadn't gained literacy let alone skills to get on line and play games (lot's of noob, let's ruin their game fun cos we're twats types...)
as for how to do it add me on PNS then go into the solo game and you'll get into the GT life screen then look for the community tab and scroll through til you find my user name and then select lobby press x and it'll say do you want to join in garfield's lobby select yes and it'll take about 2 mins to connect (not my connection the game is very slow to load these things grrrrrrr.... ) then you're in if we're racing then it's likely they'll be a few chatting or maybe none if it's serious bizness but in between it's like any other social chat room type event with text and voice support... winner picks the pp some aids are disallowed to make it fairer on all and every few races you get to vote to change track so if you're having a nightmare day on one track you might get one you're better at...
no one's allowed to use the monster cars and we've banned nordshilffe because it only causes arguments, people aren't allowed to bump you or ram like in dodgems but it's racing and accidents do happen (just say sorry if you hit someone and don't deliberately try and take someone out) the exception to this is nascar which is basically dogems and just a muck about rather than racing of any real kind...
best races tend to be in the slower cars because then everyones crippled by the same amount handicap wise (most people tune cars within an inch of their lives and then forcing them to only drive slower ones means no one shit car is better than another)... largely it's about close racing and the dog fights rather than woooo look how fast I go... find a car which suits you and your skill level and then just learn it...
best thing to do is pick an FF which are the most stable (front engined front wheel drive) and work up from there to fr (front engined rear wheel drive) and then on to MR (mid engined rear wheel drive) or the bizarre rr (rear engine rear wheel drive) or other oditities stay away from the big names which might seem like yes I'm driving a massive powerful car until you hit the corner at which point you're in the sand and having a hellish time getting back on track... then just pootle round at worst you'll get some experince points and level up quicker and some cash, so long as you remain in the race even at the back you'll get a few grand and this allows you to get more cars... there's tuning sites for most cars so you can learn to set up your car to a basic level then the rest is down to your driving style on line...
some use wheels, some have full rigs they've spent a shed load on, some just use a pad and trounce the lot of em (our best racer at the moment is a 12 year old girl who kicks all the lads arses and has to leave at 8:30 cos her parents want her in bed by 9!!funny watching the rare occurence of a girl playing a computer gaming kicking arse and all the usual fnar it's a bird bollocks stops
) it doesn't matter what level or age gender race you're at so long as you race clean and fair that's the only real rules...
see you there...