No worries . As with so many things in racing it all depends on different tyres, tracks, what sort of temps you are dealing with etc, ive seen races where the track got grippier as the temps went up and many times where the track got quicker as the temps went down. Its too complex to just say it works one way or the other. I was confused too when i first started watching racing and I would hear one thing then the next week I would hear the opposite haha.
Lap times definitely are relevant, and quite a lot IMO. Especially since most people WILL drive under perfect weather aka 25deg celsius, no wind 0% chance of rain ALL the time. That's sad reality, it has always been like that in every sim. In rf1 there is only super artifical "wet" tracks which don't really make driving any harder (you just need to be more careful on throttle as whole track has like 80% of dry grip) and people still NEVER raced that. In GTR2 rain was decently made and the same thing, 95% of all races are dry. I believe the reason is that people want to have the possibility to do a universally fast lap in each lap they do. You might be driving better than player B but since you had worse conditions your lap time might be worse so you won't be able to brag with your time. So basically the only varying factor for those people will be track rubbering, which does have big impact but once you do your fastest after hundreds of slower laps the chance is some of your laps were done on extremely rubbered tracks and hence are worth comparing to other peoples.
