Devs, impossible to collect good rep using rookie server. May be you do like ACC? Drive with bots instead rookie servers? Grant access to ranked servers with 90+ reputation. Reputation 0....89 - collect offline with bots.
Plenty of other people have managed it... Racing offline is not an indication of ability given that you can set the AI to whatever you want. Do you really want rookies who have never raced real human beings able to have their first online races in the higher level events? That's asking for a crash-fest, not through malicious behaviour but through inexperience. And what's to stop the wreckers gaining enough rep in five minute races against minimum difficulty AI so that they can start ruining the higher level online races too?
Rubbish, my rep went from 94 to 83 when stupidly I quit out of a race between end of qualifying & race start, it has taken around 12 races, mainly in rookie servers, to get back to 91, so not impossible.
I think it's worth reflecting on what exactly you want from a race. 1) If the main thing you need is to gain some rep to join a higher rep server, you can start somewhere in the back and do a clean race without trying to fight other people. It is very much possible if your goal is rep grind. And I doubt you need a lot of races to get back to 75-80. 2) If you want both rep and rating, well, that's much more difficult because there are many inexperienced and/or careless people there. Sometimes you decide it's not worth it and you better focus on racing on 75+ rep servers which are less chaotic. Also, what I noticed: 1) joining a less populated server and/or racing during less popular hours helps with rep grind because there's much less people around and thus less chances of incidents; 2) racing mainly for rep grind is quite mundane but you can combine it with a practice in consistency which is always useful.
RR's bots differ with other sims bots. RR's bots drive like real art.intelligence, other sims have artificial idiots. So race with bots in RR and gain starting rep - not so bad.
I usually have a reputation of 90 and I go to rookie servers several times (because I like the track or the car) and I don't usually find many problems with people. I know I have to pay more attention than usual. In general, in those servers I usually stay in the positions above and there are less problems but for my part I cannot complain. In fact I usually have problems on pro servers because some "drivers" think they are the best and try impossible plays (especially at the end of the races). Where I find more problems in the rookies servers are in the moments when i have a car in front of me which they get a blue flag and many either do not let you pass or do not know how to do it safely and behind you have another driver who want you advance.
I haven't really had any issues in Rookie Server races. Sure, some people went for very questionable overtakes but you can often identify potential troublemakers pretty early on. If someone keeps trying to send it, you might want to just let them pass. Also when lapping, stay away from the backmarkers. Some people will make it really smooth for you to lap them but some seem to play without mirrors or the track map. When you have a bad race, look over the replay to see if you could have done better in any of the crashes. Even if it was the other person who was at fault, maybe you could have done something to avoid them?
Just started on the rookie server. From 54 to 76 in 4 races. (had to make up losses from a race a long time ago) Yes drivers hit me and I made some mistakes too. Overall my experience so far is positive. Especially being a rookie server. You have to get experience one way or another. People crash in real races too.