Anyone have any idea what the point of this is? Could you not just put the normal race settings on practice and not add any other drivers?

Also why are the bots so retarded? they seem to be about 20 secs off of a competitive laptime on most cars.

The point of hot lapping is to upload your lap against others and compete with people that way, rather than live online racing.

The AI, while never particularly intelligent, are in need of an update to cope with the new physics. On the big to-do list.

hotlapping is done following a certain set of rules, while normal practise mode doesn't have these rules.
Just try a hotlap (in hotlap mode) and try a shortcut somewhere over the grass - you'll see the lap becomes invalid.
Without these rules, hotlapping would be one big mess where everyone cuts short all the time.

Thanks for that answer, I was recently wondering the same thing.

As for the bots, they'll get quicker when you let them learn. Give them a full tank of fuel and let them do 30 laps or so and you'll see their lap times dropping a little with each one.