What are you using for the Scenic Scrambles championship?

I've tried five different cars with multiple tunes each, and set the difficulty all the way down to Tourist, but no matter what I do virtually the entire field is ahead of me before turn one, and the best I've been able to manage is fifth place. I've been setting my cars up as rally cars since it's a dirt race, maybe I should be setting them up for road racing? I just don't get it. I know I'm not a great driver, but the amount of acceleration the driveatars are getting even on Tourist is unbelievable. If I try to cheese it by using Anna out of frustration I end up in last. I'm at my wit's end here.