Being a huge fan of Need for Speed Shift, hearing this described as feeling more like a Shift 3 than a Project CARS sequel from someone made me really excited to get this... and it's okay, mostly?

Like, the driving and sound design are good (to me, at least) but the career progression is straight garbage

So, the way you unlock new events is by completing career objectives, and there are 3 for every event. A lot of the time winning the race isn't even an objective, so for a bunch of events it's actually better to let everyone pass so you can master all corners in peace...
Winning does net you more exp though, which you're gonna want, because the way you earn money is... BY LEVELING UP!
You don't get any money whatsoever for participating in a race, or completing objectives, or even winning the dang thing, unless it provides enough exp for you to level up (and a single race giving you enough exp is pretty rare)
AND... you're really gonna need that cash, because a lot of events require very specific cars
"Oh, this event needs a Road D from between 1980-1989, and there are only 3 cars that fit that criteria and I don't own any of them" so you grind the same races you've already played to try to get any exp to level up to get credits to buy a new car, and as it turns out this car is only needed for this one event... so you sell it for HALF THE MONEY BACK, WHICH ISN'T EVEN ENOUGH TO BUY ANOTHER CAR FROM THE SAME CLASS, so you have to grind the same boring races to get another car that you're only gonna use in a single event (or, if you're lucky, you might even use it for TWO events)
Almost forgot, if you're like me and aren't a great driver, you might get stuck because you can't complete any remaining career objectives (pace setter and hot lap events suck) but fret not! You can spend some of your slowly earned pennies on unlocking the other events (good luck affording the car needed to race in it though!)

I have lost where I was going with this, I am only ranting because I want to love this game but am unable to do so