Begginer needs advice

Hello everyone
Totaly begginer here that got a wheel as a christmas present(I love driving but never tried simulations). I started to look for a racing game and found about iRacing, so now I have a subscription and spent a few days on tests, watched some vidoes, went in the forum and read some posts, then did some time attacks(and a couple of rookie races) and.... I am really struggling, like everyone in the rookie race was 25 seconds ahead of me. I know that I am a novice and its ok to be at the last place, but I was expecting to see more novice people like me in the rookie races.
So I want to understand what to do. I have heard that iRacing is pretty difficult, should I start from something else and come back to iRacing after I have some experience(please advice good options then)? Or is it ok to be this bad in the beggining? I understand that I have no experience and my struggle is ok, but my concern is that maybe I am just too bad at this(although I am pretty good at gaming)))))
What were your experience when you just started?
Any help is appreciated. Many thanks.