I somehow managed to beat the whole club using the older GT86 and Sports + Tires. With my Upgrades I only had 244 Horsepower. I got lucky on the boss race as he crashed before he was able to blast past me.
That’s awesome, congrats! I found that no matter which car user chooses, the NPC matches the users cars performance level. So in reality there is no right or wrong car, one exception being drift clubs requirement of RWD, but with the latest update 1.2.0 they added drive train swap, so now you can even go with FWD AWD 4WD and shell out 320 gold for RWD conversion.