It depends.
If you like me, who cant stand monotony, get bored easily and need constant stream of freshness trough the game to keep your interests then LFS is not for you.
Because there is only 6 tracks and different layouts of that tracks.
In addition 4 of the tracks have no remarkable differences, in fact Aston, Kyoto, Westhill, blackwood could as well be different layouts of the same track, because the only difference between them is layout, visually they are the same (grass, trees and nothing interesting or climatic about them)
But if you can drive the same cars on the same tracks for years and still have all the enthusiasms because physics its the only that matters then LFS is perfect for you.
I just think its important to mention it, otherwise you will return here a few months after buying LFS and make a long thread why LFS is a great but dying game and it needs DX 9/10, updates, new cars/tracks how to save LFS, why mods should be allowed etc.
You forgot the by far most important thing: the close racing with other people.
I couldn't care less if there's anything interesting or climatic besides grass and trees next to the track if the action ON the track is right. The physics don't matter that much too me, neither as long as they aren't NFS-like.
First scenario:
You race with other people suddenly someone ram you in the but, accusing you of driving like a noob and initiate voting which is most of the time result in you being kicked even if no one seen the situation because everyone was concentrated on the road.
Second scenario:
Everyone rocket to the first corner resulting in T1 massacre and 50% of the car canceling the race and returning to pit.
You still on the road in undamaged car, you too slow to put up a challenge for leaders of the stake but you skill is enough to compete with everyone else, too bad everyone else one by one returning to the pit usually when you pass them and just playing with setups, leaving pit, after a few corners return to the pit and continue like this till race end.
I would like to race too bad usually there is like 5 drivers (Usually too fast for me to even think of getting near them) last till the end of the race, everyone else just playing time attack.
Third scenario:
No one care about racing, everyone just like chating, playing with setups, drifting, etc.
End even best servers suffer from it.
Truth told leaving race just because you not first is the most irritating by now.
I am not an alien and I am not a kick ass driver, i dont drive really fast but i love to race and I am not the worst because there is a lot of worse drivers I know them when i pass them, unfortunately the only one racing is the head of the stake.
The rest is just like what ever.
True told at the beginning thing made me rage so hard that i resorted to offline racing and dont care about online anymore (Maybe give it another chance one day).
But as for now I find it hard to believe that you can just enter a server where this behaviour not spoiling all the fun.
Of course i dont speak about Official Race Events like Leagues etc, which are rare but ppl actually racing and not just testing setups.
Anyway if 10 dollars is not too much for you, you still can buy S2 Just because it have pretty good physics Just be warned that there is not much content and if you a person who gets bored easily there is a big chance that you next thread will be about lack of the new stuff in LFS.
Since mods are prohibited and devs have pretty lazy pace of work you can forget about new tracks or cars in the near future.
Yeah, the behaviour you are talking about exists on every server with more than 10 or 15 racers but the thing is not to let that shit spoil the fun for you. Just go on to finish the race, there's another chance to have a good race against another driver that's as fast as you in the next race.
And he can't "forget about new tracks and cars". The development speed is not the fastest indeed but there are good and valid reasons for that. And I'm pretty confident that we won't have to wait that much longer until we can drive the VWS.