Once you've found an available server to race and you are connected to it you'll find yourself in charge of bigger responsabilities compared to products similar to netKar PRO.
In the netKar PRO enviroment, you are basically free to do whatever you want, the phylosophy behind the simulator is "don't do anything if the user doesn't tell me to do it, and don't force the user to do anything if they don't want to".
The first hard impact with this is when you join a race that is about to start. You'll find yourself sitting in your car, inside your box. You have a grid position assigned, but, to go there, you need to press the blinking "go to grid" button in the lower right corner of your screen.
The point is, if you hit the button, you'll car will be moved to the grid. But if you don't, nobody is going to put your car on the grid, and the race could start without you being there. The server is sending chat messages to all the drivers every 20 seconds, advising on how long before the red lights will appear. You can use all this time, in your box, to make the last changes to your car before you go to the grid. You could actually start your engine and go around the track, the system will not stop you.