There have always been wreckers, even in the old days of GPL. I never personally quite understood this given how hardcore it was.
I can't say I've done a huge amount of public racing in recent years, but I have done the odd league here and there, mostly on Simbin stuff and more recently Xbox since I believe the gap between consoles and PCs is now starting to close. League/community racing is the only thing I am interested in these days for the very reasons you describe.
I'm feeling old now, but in the old days there were all these utilities that you needed to tweak things, particularly in GPL's later days (anyone remember GEM+?).
Nowadays there are things like Steam for easy install and I think that's lowered the bar. That's not to say thats a bad thing, but there are pros and cons to everything.
But definitely look for some organised racing. Leagues are still a good place regardless of ability and the communities around them will have single events and community nights if you want less formal racing, but you will find other like-minded individuals looking for clean racing.
PS: After a few minutes looking around the dusty corners of the interweb there are still active GPL leagues and GPL Rank is still being updated! Go team!
