if you lissen on the title RACE DRIVER GRID its racing not tuning they made it so you coud take a look into the racing world not to pretend to be a ricer -.-'
I laughed when I read that, because most of the time its true (I tend to keep the frames on stock as much as possible). Though let's not forget that you do get your own team eventually and you should be taking part in the car's maintenance, tuning and hardware. Although, buying new cars is fun too.
What they are truly missing is the teammate leveling system. Sometimes, you just want to keep the guy and I'm pretty sure that even if you finished last, you still learn something, which this game doesn't feature.