you can still go to http://www.radicalsportscars.com/racing/virtual-racing and sign up for a free month's trial. You need to add your credit card or paypal but you can cancel that in your account page once all setup for the month.
It's different from LFS and rFactor. LFS still has the best community of any sim but for racing, iRacing has the best environment I think.
It's updated at least once every 3 months.
The best offer on the table right now is $60 for 6 months including the Lotus 1979 F1 car. Additional tracks and cars work out to be between $15 and $25 each.