One thing in Project Cars is, that you can adjust the force feedback very detailed. Which doesn't mean its easy to adjust - its extremely complex in fact, to get a setting that is nice to use. Generally, force feedback is not helping to drive faster, rather the opposite.
On the Nordschleife, the primary challenge is to learn the track well enough to be able to drive consitently fast - and not fly out of the track on every second lap. I have driven there for for years now and I'm still struggling. Overtaking there is a whole different ball game. In my experience, driving against AI opponents usually sucks. Its not realistic at all, no matter what level you set them to be. More realism comes when you drive against other real people in network races. But if those are strangers, it often happens that there are total idiots among them, who just want to ruin the race for the other players. The old internet problem, you know... they let everybody into the web. :)