Question on Torque ....

#1 IMO this would be relatively easy to do. There's already good vehicle support, you would just have to do some code for triggers to count laps, start and stop the race, etc, which should be pretty simple.

#2 There are already some examples to this effect floating around the forums and resources sections of the site.

But yeah, basically it comes down to writing some simple scripting code.

#3 Yes it's quite possible. I managed to get it counting laps and it kept track of peoples positions by placing triggers/checkpoints along the track. It can be done using only scripting too. No C++ required.

I did run into problems with large pileups of cars though. If 3+ cars are all touching at the same time the framerate drops like crazy. At least it did on my computer with an old build, things may have changed since then.