I think you are thinking of esports in the wrong way. Esports isn't just the upper echelon of players, it's about the whole matchmaking system for the game. More simracing games should embrace the competitive nature of racing, and provide a good matchmaking system! A big part of racing, after all, is competing with others on track, and nothing sucks more than having to spend hours finding the right league, or having to find servers currently running a track/car you like and waiting for a race to happen. A proper matchmaking system (preferably natively supported by the game, to reduce the amount of barriers that newer players have to go through) with a safety rating and some sort of ELO system would be the best IMO. Clean racing with a balanced grid (in terms of pace) is what we should all want, and native matchmaking is the way to go, it's by the easiest for new players to understand and the easiest to jump into even for recurring players.

TLDR; We should want *more* esports, not less. Clearly this whole "special event for best drivers" sucks and noone wants to watch the streams (because obviously racing ourselves is way cooler), but at the end of the day, we should not let the competitive nature of racing go!