Ok having now spent around an hour or so playing the game I'll give my first impressions. Sound is still abysmal, no two ways about it cars do not sound like their real life counterpart be it the Laguna V6 in the Clio or B series VTEC, K series VTEC in the Honda's. The audio appears to have been supplied by a blender, hedge trimmer or Dyson depending on CC and layout. Some of the cars appear to suffer massively over the top unstable characteristics under braking with a tendency to want to swap ends even with a gentle squeeze of the trigger. Reflections on the standard cars look dumb to say the least and when given closer static attention they do look a bit on the ropey side especially when compared to the premium. Lack of interior view when switching from premium to standard cars is also highly annoying and I still think it's a pisstake given the game has been in production for the last 6 years.
On the plus side when moving the standard cars don't (from a sensible distance) look that bad, it's an issue that becomes less noticeable when you're hacking along at a decent pace focusing on the driving rather than staring at the cars. The physics seem on the whole to be a comfortable step in the right direction from GT5p. The menu's have that familiar GT feel which those of us who grew up playing the previous GT games will know. There looks to be a decent variety of events in there which will hopefully mean playing the single player wont feel too much like you're just grinding to get it over with as in GT4. On the whole while it didn't blow me away or IMO live up to either the hype or the standard it should given it's length dev I will probably end up picking up a copy at some point in the future.
I only played the single player side of the game so didn't get a chance to see what the online side of things is like and only got a chance to play with a pad. Once I get a chance to play with a wheel (hopefully at some point in the next week or so) I'll make my mind up on the physics. Some cars seemed to react oddly but this could be due to the abysmal pad or it's programming so I'll avoid blaming the inconsistencies on the game until I've had a crack with the wheel. I actually really enjoyed the 300SL test on a section of the nurburgring