That's always been on of my criticisms of Gran Turismo - the 'free' nature of it works against it at times.
1. Lots of people buy the game for the X1 or Veyrons or other fast cars. Or even Skyline GT-Rs, to race on the 'ring or Top Gear track or whatever, but have to play in crap cars for ages to be able to do so. It annoys them.
2. People just work out which way to farm money as quickly as possible to get to the racing events they enjoy (or are sufficiently challenging to be enjoyable, unlike the first few modes), but now also have to do the crap races to get the right 'level'.
I don't WANT to do the rubbishy races, but until I've unlocked levels and got enough money (by farming, natch) I'm stuck playing a game I don't really want to at this stage. I've always likely doing licences. The challenges (Top Gear, NASCAR, AMG etc) are quite good fun, but also excessively irritating - you have to drive like a mentalist (in a manner that would see lifetime bans in real life) to be able to complete them, and often a slightest touch or 0.5cm too much tyre on grass ends the challenge. Or you miss out on gold by 0.1 seconds and want to destroy the PS3.
It's fun. But it's also crap. I hate being forced to play aspects of an 'open' game that I don't want to. But I'm going to have to face facts that watching a RUBBISH B-Spec driver complete 8 minute races in a Yaris, or buying a microcar and doing those races are the way forwards.