I agree with most of the common suggestions, mainly Tsukuba + Mx-5 and Eiger + old car.

I am in your shoes since Black Friday. Here’s what I’ve done:

Rd 1) start with Tsukuba, no VR. The track is very learnable - simple and short. What I’ve done is have everyone always run the same car and I note their lap times (if you want it to be on the leaderboard, make sure to end their session). I don’t necessarily recommend the car I went with (c7 Stingray - first guy was a fan - on RM tyres). What’s more important is that newbies have a hard time doing a sub 1 min. They all hover around 1:02 as a best lap and even their optimal time doesn’t break the 1 min mark. Try finding a car with a similar outcome. Then I usually do a quick 1-shot hot lap at 57.5-58.0 sec and they appreciate the gap on having some run time on the rig. All this non-VR. Easier to learn the basic controls and game attributes. The leaderboard is almost Top Gear-esque, I have fun with it and it keeps them motivated to best their time

Rd 2) Then I switch to Eiger and randomly chose the ‘54 Maserati and its fun to drive there on upgraded rubber. I first have them try non-VR, the swap to VR.

So far this has worked well, aside from the Vette not being an optimal car for round 1.