YES, there are proper races with clean and sound racers to be found in S2.
No, not nessecarily at all times on CTRA anymore, I'm afraid.
I think it's got something to do with the points-measurement & reward-scale and, of course, with the jumped-up popularity this X-systen has seen in the last couple of months.
I started racing on there when still named "STCC" ...public something. And it was a huge difference to what you see "nowadays".
Reason? I see it as this:
when solely run with touring cars (i.e. near-stock-standard cars with road-tires) and the prospect of eventually qualify for that STCC racing-league - which unfortunately didn't live long enough to take off and lead the way to a strong following outside the reach of S2 - license holders, this was the best way to have fun in the standard-cars provided in lfs. There were virtually no servers on permanently running STD and TBO class anymore. Worse still, the beautiful lrf-class cars didn't seem to drag any attention to them outside the drift scene.
->Everybody was power-hungry, going straight to the GTR-class of cars and messing around mostly on the beginner-friendly and comparatively short-and-wide high-speed tracks such as Aston National
(as3). My team used to host such a server when S2 came out. Until encountering some tech-related problems that one was like bursting from within - with near 20+ racers being constantly on in the evenings. Yes, we are a fun-team and not into any form of professional server-hosting. Thus we had a few wreckers and -when one of us was on- so we gave out warnings and kicks time and again - making a fun environment for clean racing possible. And the overall popularity of that specific track grew by a huge margin - with new servers appearing out of nowhere.
THAT you see is the problem today:
As soon as with the x-system those new CTRA-servers got introduced and the licensing system was enlarged to the higher car classes, everyone and everything started to go rank-crazy. Thus relieving the CTRA-2 with it's TBO-class cars of the majority of its racers -> they are competing with the higher-ranked on CTRA3, now.
That's because there they get to race all the already-proven-to-be-fast competitors and -hopefully- some cleaner racing than on the newbie-grade CTRA-1. AND only on the higer servers they can effectively collect points to move up in the ranks, since holding e.g. a platinum license means _significant_ shortage of the received points when scoring some good positions racing in a beginner-grade car.
And there you have it: As soon as the license allows one will strive for getting points even faster -> thus moving to a higher car-class and joining most-likely the Racing-3 - given the almost-empty state of the tbo-class server.
Interestingly, some higher-ranked CTRA-users seem to join even the Racing1 for some pedal-to-the-metal fun here and there - so am I. I't simply because racing the road-cars is fun. And it's most fun with a large number of competitors. Only there is one catch: The Racing1 is beginner-grade. And today this doesn't mean you can expect clean racing all the time. Not even half the time, to be honest 'cause minor mistakes happen much too frequent and mostly all over the place on that one. Then there is the misconception of a lot of new ones how to behave plus the somewhat "nosy" atmosphere when things get chaotic...
...resulting in me leaving that place after a couple of sprints.
That said, the races sometimes are and still CAN BE MUCH FUN. It's simply a matter of WHEN to join a server and meeting the right people.
PLUS - simple but true:
most casual racers - who make up a large proportion of the CTRA "heavy-users" - just go by the 'not-empty' filter in the built-in server list. And there most of the time the Racing2 just doesn't sho up, due to a lack of racers. I have been joining it and started a race a few days back and it took about half an hour until some of the "lost sheep" that appeared on there (and some of them leaving straight-away again) settled for some good racing action. But, yeah, that takes some dedication and some time to come by.
Happy Racing
Heiko aka [D-R-T] Dr.Ben
PS.: shame the CTRA ditched the lrf server.
And here another tip: sometimes when not over-loaded with ppl the Jump'n'bump can be fun, too. Just try to stay out of it when the "cracks" go for time-attacs in the middle of the race. To be honest: that can confuse an acutal race as much as some newbies crashing on the first 2 corners