I don't understand.... You are keen on the whole "learn no assists" thing, but don't want to use "strict" rules?
Our league uses strict corner cutting, and have done so for years, as does pretty much every league out there by the looks of it. We manage 50% races just fine with maybe 2-3 out of 20 drivers picking up a 3 sec pen. It's all about driver skill and precision. I'm not sure what other options in the settings menu you'd class as strict.... Can you elaborate? We use "Standard" damage and realistic rules and flags. We also have ghosting off, requiring drivers to react and respect yellow flags and hazards as well as blue flags. This works well for our league and since using these stricter rules, the standard of racing has massively improved and we've only had 3 tickets for post race incidents in 9 rounds this season. If you have good drivers, they adapt!