Hiya Camel!
If you haven't touched the game for a while, you might be surprised. There is a strong online racing community, several new tracks, converters for IndyCar and NASCAR tracks, and a whole bunch of other new stuff.
I strongly advise you to go to Alison Hine's site:
http://simracing.com/alison/gpl/ Download Alison's setups, she has some really easy to drive setups for all the cars. The Honda and Coventry setups are great, but the Ferrari setups are my favorite because they are a little quicker.
Also she has info for online racing, and some things you can do to the offline AI to make them easier to race.
I have the Logitech Wingman Formula Force wheel, for which you can find a lot of setup information on Alison's site.
They are $140 to $170 new but I bought a remanufactured one like this:
http://www.compgeeks.com/cgi-bin/details.asp?cat=InputDevices&sku=205-8649 I've had no problems with it, and it was nice to save $100 or so.