Well, I was eager to finally get to class A, then start collecting points and do upgrades to other cars too and maybe get the other merit (250 wins with the same car) the way it was intended (actually winning races and not having private races where other player loses intentionally).
Apart from the merit I got for reaching class A I was disappointed.
"Not enough drivers to start this race" Not once or twice. I entered more than 10 races so far, only one race went through which had 3 players.. The minimum.
I'm not sure if it's always been like this, or is it a temporary thing. But seriously, something interesting should be added to racing to get more people involved :S
There are plenty of players in Class A who race. When I join an official race, there are almost always enough players to race.
The problem is the matchmaking system, which attempts to match drivers with other drivers of similar skill (win/loss ratio, not driver skill). The system often fails for players who just joined Class A, and other Class A players without fully upgraded cars.
I'm having this same issue. Just moved to Class A, and I can't get an official race.
I'm mostly doing racing for the merit points, so I can work on 250 wins in one car without doing any more official races. But at this point, it looks like I have no chance to ever gain more driving points in order to finish upgrading my car. I need about 24 more to do all upgrades, not counting safety upgrades. You can't get them if you can't do official races.
The problem looks like it has a catch 22 involved. People get to A class, try multiple times, and find out that they can't get into a race, so it's a waste of time starting one and sitting for an hour. After you fail that way a few times, you quit trying. And the more of us who quit trying to race in A class, the more likely the next guy moving to A class is going to have the same problem, in which case he gives up also.
I'd much rather enter a race and end up racing against people who are better than me than to sit for an hour and find out that I don't get to race at all.
And I'd rather do an unofficial race than to sign up for an official race and just sit.
Perhaps the game could have some code to watch for this sort of situation and have you race against artificial NPC's. If someone has waited for an hour and there aren't enough racers, you would race against NPC's instead. That way, it isn't pointless to sign up and wait for the race to start, and you would still have at least some kind of chance of gaining more racing points.
Anyways, it seems this is not as bad as I first came to class A. I did some custom races with class A car, and kept trying to enter official races every once in a while.. Now it seems I'm getting official races with full racers almost every time I enter one.
So for those who are having this issue, hold on to it. Don't give up! Just do some custom races and keep trying, the matching system for class A will work for you too eventually.
I think the problem is mainly because class A drivers have been there for a while and they have high driving skills, so once yours is acceptable to match them you'll get in.
Ouch, you'll need a very high driving skill to compete if your car has no upgrades. And even then, I don't know how many races you'll have to enter so you could win a couple. For that problem I'd suggest joining a mechanic shop (company) which has special for trading job points for racing points.
My driving skill when I entered class A was around 7, not so high but most people reach class A with a driving skill of 4-5 or so I think. I had more than enough points to have my car fully upgraded though without entering any race in class A.
I don't know if my answer helps, but certainly I hope so.
I found the same problem the first day I hit class A, just the first 2 or 3 races there was hardly anyone else so they didn't get run. But having read the post above I may well have waited 2 or 3 races before upgrading my class A car (I had been saving my race points for class A so had enough to upgrade a car pretty fully). I've not had a single race since (a week or so) with less than 6 people racing.
I don't know for sure, but I think they must have made some changes to the code. When I first moved to class A, I pretty much couldn't get a race. Time and time I'd sit for an hour and there would be either nobody else in the race, or one person. Either way, it would fail. I posted about it above. But a few days after I made that post, suddenly I started getting grouped with other people. Since then, every time I've tried to enter an official race, we've had six people. I think they realized that there was a problem and updated the code to fix it.
How can you get an 11 driver's skill before entering class A? My skill is 8.61 and I've entered over 1000 races with class A cars, having won 36% of the races I entered. I came to this thread because I've also had to wait a long time for some official races, by the way. I just started racing again after many months. I don't remember what my driver's skill used to be though, does it decrease with time? Do people just not race enough anymore or am I doing something wrong? :P