I also recognized "new players" with a lower online rank telling me that they
do play the game for just about some weeks. The curious thing here is that some
of those have earnt the platinum trophy in just about two or three weeks, while
haven't played the game ever before and do race close to the best performing
difficult BRs and similar things online. xD

Well, I don't care about the online rank, it's just an indicator for how long
you've played with the current PSN ID. And if a "new player" joins the show, I
just treat them by their performance on the track. That's it.