I remember playing the beta demo countless hours online with the XFG on BL, 0.3b maybe? I can't remember.
When you found people of your same skill, it was amazing, otherwise it was caos in the first curve. I don't think that has changed much.
I've never ever played the same track, with the same car so many times in any other game. And I played with mouse and keyboard lol.
The game was great already. There were not many games with a good online mode back then, but LFS worked great. This game was done properly from the ground up. It was the first game I bought online.
In the back straight of Blackwood, the guy was turning like a snake left and right, he finally stayed on the right side, and when I was passing him he moved to the left again and we crashed.
His excuse was: "I was doing like in F1" "don't you watch F1? they do that all the time"
I remember great races because there were only a few people (0.2-0.3). People with the best internet connection opened the servers in their own computers. At first I used the mouse, then I got a crappy wheel.