Lessons learned:
Always online games are best for PC. Plus it will live almost forever. No tension of server shutdown.
Never buy always online games in consoles.

Driveclub wanted to implement the power of the cloud, but they had a huge misfortune to have several perfectly sunny days at launch.
Online games need to be played only when it's overcast or raining.

It only has to look like a disaster to really be one.  I'm sure many have decided not to get this game because of this fiasco.

If they don't fix this problem fast, Driveclub's legs will be cut fast.

This.

We should make a thread about the 10 developers we can trust on day 1. 

I would include Bungie but after Destiny.... UGH NO

Yeah trying to suggest this is a Sony issue only, I mean lets look at Sim City or Diablo, or many MMO's... this is an industry wide issue, and unfortunately its due to high costs and the inability to understand trends and work out how many people are likely to buy and access a product in the early days of a product launch.

Yeah, it seems that no matter the amount of beta testing of these setups, they seem to fail.  It is much harder to understand why the console versions fail so much though.  With a fixed set of system(consoles) apabilities, this should be much easier to plan for than PC's.

This game has had so much bad luck,

its annoying but drive club is heaps of fun offline and beautiful to watch

And people think those PS+ subscriptions are going towards better servers... LMAO. Sony hasn't changed at all regarding server handling

Actually this means that power of the cloud is a joke. Driveclub servers are just as much 'cloud' as Azure is. Plus sticking it on a bigger network doesn't automatically mean you won't have issues. Writing server code that can split up and scale up indefinitely without bottlenecks is not trivial.
Happens with almost every big release. A direct result of the industry focus on day 1 sales, yet it making more economical sense to base your server code on expected average demand.

It did seem to connect for me once and I saw 1 leaderboard. For the rest all I get is spinning 'busy' icons.

Good thing the offline game has me completely hooked atm. Driving is very satisfying and the environments and lighting are simply amazing. The game offers a nice challenge getting all the stars, no sleeping at the wheel racking up the points. Even after getting all objectives on a track I find myself restarting it again anyway cause it's so much fun. I'm level 24 now, 8 hours played, 80 out of 225 stars, just finished the amateur championship.