The game has many layers.... many of which are not very apparent for a new user...
- There are the demo servers for the cruisers/recreational racers. Those are almost always filled with 8-12 cars.
- There are other open race servers like cargame.nl (brilliant fun by the way) with ~10 minute races that are full (32 cars... in every class imaginable) all weeknights and weekends.
- Other stuff like drift servers and rallyx have occasional crowds. You just have to know WHEN to log on. Want it or not, this is a game with a lot of europeans... so when it's evening/weekends there is the best time to log on.
- Then after that there are leagues. Plenty of them. Just dig around the forum and you will find leagues for newbies (with basically no experience needed) to some very competitive stuff.
- There is even Enduro races. Example: Masters of Endurance is a 24-hour event for teams usually run in January..... the Kyoto 16 hours in October..... New Dimension Racing even has an enduro LEAGUE (GT2 World Series) for 3 and 6 hour races. Several others exist. That was just 3 examples.
There is still plenty of stuff to keep people busy. It just takes a while to find the right league or server