I still play LFS from time to time, as I'm fairly good in it. No other game has captured my attention, very good physics, great online play (used to be...) and lfsworld stats/info site is awesome. It's a bit dated, this is the "used to be..." part as there have been few updates in the last like 5 years and many people lost interest. Graphics is DX8 and was never its strong point, but I don't particularly care for it.
Grid and NFS are not sims, period. Race On and GTR2 seem popular among some of my simracing friends.
iRacing is probably the best one for sim racing right now, and it's marketed as pro sim racing (lots of well known real life drivers, esp. from Nascar are members, laser scanned tracks, centrally organized leagues with prizes, wheel is required etc). The only reason I don't play it is that I don't have enough time to justify paying monthly subscriptions, and the core game has a couple cars and couple tracks, everything else is additional content they charge for. The charging model is simply not my cup of tea...
I have a Logitech G25 wheel, had Logi Momo before that, only PC, no consoles.