Unfortunatly, the setup thing seems to be typical for advanced race sims. PCars is one of the worst for that, I think. Even only the setup of the FFB for different wheels filled entire forums, and volumes of pdf charts. Plus tips for calibration and steering angle and all that. And thats just before you even start driving. The car setups are so detailed and complex that you can spend years to work out the best setup, since there are so many cars and tracks.
But you know what I found most annoying in race sims/games? When you get a promising looking sim with lots of cars and tracks - and then you have to start with a Vauxhall Corsa to unlock something else by winning a race, and so on and on. I ditched quite a few of that kind, because its not what I payed for. Its also why I still like PCars (1 and 2), you can drive every car on every track in every condition right from the beginning. In PCars 2 there is even a test track that contains a "soup bowl", a circle track with extreme banking, on which you can run any kind of car at top speed. Unless the car itself is too unstable to do that.
But another thing is, that I don't buy games for the PC anymore - for quite some years already by now. It was just too annoying to constantly having to get updates for the games, the graphics card and whatever else. And often enough it still didn't work properly, after all the messing around. Thats why I changed to the Playstation. It may have limitations, but at least it works.