Pro lobbies should always have full damage, penalties, all aids turned off...
I disagree with this. After months of frustration, I don't bother with the penalties anymore. To begin with, on long races, where the leader may be lapping the slower cars, or in cases where some players are on a different pit strategy, the whole ghost car business is full of bugs. Sometimes lapped cars are ghosted, sometimes they aren't. Sometimes, one is and another isn't. And it's no different at the start with cars ghosting or unghosting left and right if the field bunches up together. There's too much temptation for some people to drive through ghost cars and this completely ruins the racing. No racing series in the world (at least on this planet) has cars that phase in and out of existence and it doesn't belong in a game with sim like aspirations either. Unfortunately, there's no way to disassociate ghosting with penalties. In my opinion, no cars should ghost, EVER, in a serious lobby.
Likewise, penalties themselves are inconsistent. Sometimes there's a bit of lag and you end up making contact with cars unintentionally, and there may be no harm done from a minor tap, but if you're in a big group, you can be assessed a penalty unfairly for being in the middle of such a foray. And some of the penalty zones can be treacherous. I can see trying to stop people from corner cutting. But there are some tracks that allow wild, blatant corner cutting in some areas, and others, where if two cars are fighting side by side, and run just a little wide in a spot (something that by definition would still be within the OLR rules) you end up getting penalties that can last as long as 20 seconds. Hardly fair either.
By the same token, after a lot of back and forth, I've come to conclusion that full damage, especially on longer races and longer tracks, is just simply unfair. Especially if you turn off penalties. Just a small amount of lag at the start of a race with a large or full lobby can have an unfair impact. All it takes is one person with a laggy connection, and there only needs to be a small amount of lag, and that 8 lap race on the Nürburgring can be pretty much ruined because it takes so long to get back to the pits. Yes, I realize, sometimes, that's the way it goes. In real life, if you make a mistake on the track, you pay for it. But in real life, cars don't randomly jump around the track or phase in and out. So you end up adjusting your driving style
I do agree about the driving aids though. They shouldn't be on in a 'serious' lobby. And I wish PD would give us the ability to force ABS off as well.
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