The server maintenance seems to have helped for me. I was able to play online. However, I could not access online while already being signed into PSN. I had to log out of PSN while in game then connect to online. I only had time for 3 races on rapier so I can't really say if handling is different or what it was before. I don't recall that change being mentioned in the patch notes but who knows. They may have thrown it in. Like everyone else though, my rank was not reset to what it was prior to all the patching (82). I'm still a 25/26.