Rookie races feel empty?

I finally gave iracing a spin and damn it really is good. I've done only a couple of races in the ff1600 and I love it. The car is hard enough to remind me what am I doing with my inputs.

The problem is that during the races the tracks feel somewhat empty. After the T1 shenanigans at least 4 people disconnect. Then you don't really want to stay too close to other cars as the amount of spins/race is huge and I already got punted like that. And then there is the problem with the field disparity. Some people are doing okiyama in 2:00 and some are clocking 1:36 every lap. So sometimes the gap between the front and the back is huge.

Is it just me or am I doing something wrong?