Hi nopk, welcome to these forums!
As Flow said, there is no problem with joining the league mid-season as long as you don't mind starting with a slight(!) point handicap for the NAR driver's championship!

Seriously, if you're interested, we'll have to schedule a little practice together so we can judge your behaviour on the track. You don't have to be fast but you have to be safe and be respectful of others at all times. I'll be getting in touch with you in private for the modalities.
Auto-clutch is not allowed on our server. As the name of our league is "No Aids Racing", it follows that we run the game as "lean" as we can, driving-aids-wise. We only tolerate Launch Control (LC) because it can't be easily disabled. Driving without aids is challenging (to say the least) but it is also much more rewarding!
There is no complete single-download track pack but most of the tracks we use are the MMG tracks available at f1mods.com . The tracks are made, converted and/or adapted for MMG F1-07 as the season goes along, that's why there is no complete season download yet.
For your track problem, assuming that Flow gave you the correct link for "Italy v2", make sure that you unzip the file in "<rFactor install>\Gamedata\Locations\MMG\F1\2007_Season" (you should have an "Italy" folder in there after unzipping). If you have any other track in your game named "Italy", "Monza" or something similar (even from other mods), you will probably have to delete them.