Good news, albeit really confusing. I remember excitedly picking up GTR Evolution back in the day expecting that to be GTR3, when instead it was an expansion pack to Race 07, which required Steam and a re-download of the game back when we probably had <10GB of download quotas per month. I really hated Steam then.
GTR2 and 3 are technically both made by SimBin in much the same way that TDU1 and 2 were both made by Eden Games. We know that when TDU2 was in development work had already started on the Crew. Most of the GTL, GTR, & GTR2 developers have ended up at you know where.
All that aside I'm still looking forward to trying this as I know RaceRoom does have a well respected physics model but that I don't have time for their F2P/DLC model and reportedly bad netcode. I'm sure I've also read that these guys are working on a competitor service to iRacing as well which will be interesting.
Hardcore Realistic physics can work equally well for hardcore and casual players alike, as long as the cars are controllable on both gamepad and wheel (although there are 2 distinct types of gamepad players - ones who tap and ones who hold the steering inputs). Difficulty can be assigned to the AI only.