I found that loads of fun indeed.
Shame that TT spun in the second race and I plouged right into his smoke thinking he had spun off only to find his car right slap bang in the middle.
Brittle cars means you are hitting things. May I suggest it's the pilot at fault.
You can't reduce the damage level in the server, you can only turn it off completely.
Yes, no problem with doing our GTR/GTL type starts. We just use a standing start and our own formation lap. Also available is a formation lap into a standing start. Exactly like Formula 1. They have a warmup lap get to grid and then do standing start.