As mentioned before that the hex for my case seems to be at
You must login or register to view this content. and I'm using a EU version of the game. I have found some interesting results with certain features that were hidden. These features I have to admit brings new and interesting things one can do however these features also makes any setting on it seems to be very flaky. I want to personally thank dr1ft3r for locating this, the OP who asked and Mint Sauce for providing screenshots so that I can "see" where I should be going
Those of you who have went into LAN Match or Quick Battle mode under label_lounge button may notice that when you enter into open lobby in GT mode you will notice that there will be no lobby of any sort, neither would you be able to join with your PSN mates (friends) because you are in LAN mode. There's a quick fix for this, that is to enter into open lobby under label_lounge (at main menu) to allow your PS3 to go online.
Edit Region under label_lounge is to edit your country flag. From what I can see its based on
You must login or register to view this content.(ccTLD is short for country code Top Level Domain). So if lets say you want to impersonate being American you use US (case sensitive) as your region and when you are actually on the track inside a lobby/lounge people will see you bearing a US flag. I do not know how many times will this work but its very hard to tell because one needs others to tell them that their flag is different. In both the lobby as well as the lounge you will only see your original flag so it heavily depends on others to see for you. Also not every country listed does have a flag in the game. In that case you end up with a light gray flag with two white words printed inside that flag or box.
I have also found that when one enables online lounge demo one may not be able to see other people's nicknames/handles and would not be able to see if they were chatting/etc. My guess is that enabling this option inherently enables all options below that one even though they are not automatically ticked. I have not found a way to bypass that issue apart from possibly exiting the online lounge demo and maybe try going through each and every tickbox below that option enable and disable (saving in between) to see if that may fix the issue. Ironically enough not being able to see messages popping up on the screen but one is still able to hear other people via their voice (voice chat). I guess this is probably handy for those that doesn't want to get disturbed by all the chat messages popping up whilst they are busy battling away.
For those who enabled change view using keyboard in spectator mode (activated by pressing F1). There is a very interesting feature at the loss of being able to chat instantly. This feature from what I can see allows you to change views on each player in spectator mode. I believe there are only 4 views available (cockpit views are not available even if they are using a premium car). You do not need a keyboard for this as using the select button on the PS3 controller allows you to switch views. For those that have a keyboard, you can pretty much view up to 10 players (ranked by their ladderboard in the lobby/lounge) in 4 different views for each. Pressing F1 on the keyboard doesn't seem to do anything for me however the numbers on the keyboard (i.e. 1,2,3,4,5,...) corresponds to each player according to the ladderboard respectively. To change to a different camera view, the number for the player that you are viewing and the key below and right of the other key to view the camera. For example, to change to other views for the very first person on the ladderboard, its q, a, z, for second person its w, s, x, etc. I do not know if its different if you do not have a QWERTY keyboard but I do not believe it would be different. Unfortunately as said before to be able to change to different views whilst in spectator mode you lose the ability to be able to type instantly though you can see there is a chat button in the middle on the bottom of the screen (it is even there even if you don't have secret mode enabled). You can use that to chat instead.
Again I must stress that as per my title says, these are preliminary findings. They are not final and they are bound to change. I will try and post any interesting stuff that I find along with tips and tricks whilst having secret mode enabled.