I feel as though the rating system in this game, both driver and safety, have really not contributed to better racing overall. Therefore, I suggest removing ratings all together and bringing back the function to allow people to join on friends and followers already in a lobby before the join timer ends.
Right now, because of the way the rating system separates players into “equal” lobbies, players must all be in a group before joining a lobby. Once a party host has joined a lobby, the only way for another person to join their friends is for the host to completely back out of the lobby just so a person can join the party and then rejoin a lobby. I feel this greatly hampers the joy of playing with friends knowing you must exit a lobby just to pick up someone that wants to race with you.
If this could be done without removing the rating system, that would be fine. Ultimately, we just need the function to join friends already in lobbies without them having to exit the lobby to make a new party. This has been the way joining friends worked ever since I remember. Let’s make it the way again.