If you feel most comfortable with the 3rd person view, then drive this. Some drviers say you are faster with cockpit or tyre view, but i really think chase view has some advantages. It helps a lot in dense race situations, you allways can see your insides without turning the head, so you can concentrate on the fight. The other thing yopu just mentioned, you have a good overview, you see early if there is something on the track, you see your breaking point really early.
The advantages of the cockpit view is, that you have that mirror which helps inf fights, when someone is comming up to you. The other thing is, people wont tell you a bad simulation driver, because you use the more realistic view :P
I have tried myself to switch to cockpit view, but cant do it...or i'm not really motivated to learn the game from new.
Only in the Uf1 or XFG i can drive the cockpit view, because they are not really hard to drive :P