I think the growth will be kinda same, I'd like to have less players, but who all know eachother, not a lot players including alot of "noobs" who come and crash.
Sametime getting new players is good, but unfortunately there are players who aren't mature and that's bad. I am recently racing in drag mod demo servers with a friend, who has got demo. And surprise surprise, demo experience is pretty crap, still it remembers me I got S2 and in S2, players are much much better.
Ahh Live for Speed is just too good, watching cars move, race and watch movies in slowmotion, it just remembers me again, how good LFS really is
Well alot of offtopic from me. Oops