Thank you for your tips. I do remember reading the forums, but never getting the point of it. Maybe I should set my game to English instead of German, the translation for the latter is very weird.
I also had the problem of finding rivals during the night that I just couldn’t beat, because they were way faster than I was. And that was the case even after upgrading every part of my car. Maybe I just made the wrong choice for the first car? Which one did you start with?