Do you mean from menu or game? I am sure you can find some threads about some options in game, but i am not so sure that right now exist some particular manual like pdf for all menu options, which will be serve newcomers. But maybe in future.
There will be a manual in the future when RFactor 2 is more "mass product ready". ISI has stated that even in their minds that they do not think RFactor 2 is "product ready". They said that when they feel it is, that they will then start actually marketing and advertising the game. I could be wrong, but I have a feeling that ISI is aiming for around mid-July, since that is when the 12 month subscription (for anyone who hasn't purchased/upgraded to a lifetime membership yet) starts ticking. Anyone doing the one time $45 purchase + yearly $12 fee, instead of just the one time $85 unlimited lifetime purchase, basically ended up getting up to, depending on when they purchased, 18 months of free service. I also believe that all the 1.4x updates will be completed by around then, not to mention 2-5 more build updates.
What you call "funny collisions" is (ideally) a placeholder for the final system (at least I've read it around) and, IMHO, it is a game-breaker. I'd say that feature should have first priority but I see zero or almost zero progress since first build. I left rF2 aside untill there's some real improvement on crash physics as the current system is a flaw.
Lately i have experienced stuttering in the online races, and today i got the dreadful 1 fps bug. Extremely dissapointed by getting a bug that have existed since rf1.
Did you use TrackMap plugin when it happened? Because I'm thinking that it's the plugin that causes it, but I'm not sure. Haven't had that issue in a few weeks now although I'm using trackmap. ps. rF1 and rF2 is not the same game