I was one those people planning to play the PS+ version at the PS4 launch, then again a year later, eventually, I gave up waiting on the free version and just bought it with Xmas vouchers.
Glad I did, as it's easily one of my favourite games ever.
Evolution need to deliver the free version, but not until it's ready.
I don't care if you claim to only have paid for PS+ to get access to this one item.
You're not entitled to it just because you think it's ready.
Evolution get's to decide when they think it's ready.
And IMO, the servers still aren't ready.
Issues since Xmas:
I've had consistent though minor connectivity issues since I bought it(without even touching MP)
I've had to close/re-open the game because I couldn't make it re-connect.
It can sometimes take a minute to connect and highlight club/challenge options on the main menu.
The number of challenges displayed will be out of sync between different levels of menus, and it can take minutes to display the fact that you have no challenges, even though the prev menu said there were.
I've also had issues where winning times posted in a challenge kept disappearing throughout the last day of the challenge. It all ended fine, but I had no idea what was going to happen with that all day.
As a paying customer, I'm still waiting on the IOS app to track my challenges
This is all without the extra users the PS+ version would inevitably bring.
I expect a PS+ version is close to being released with the recent update to the starter tour - making the game a bit friendlier for new comers. But I'm still unsure that the servers are ready.