Sim racers are definitely helped by 60fps when it comes to fluidity and responsiveness. Plus an unlocked framerate in these fast paced games is more than likely going to lead to screen tearing and janky controls, which would be horrible in a racer.
Your first person shooter argument is flawed because I would rather not play a "boring" game regardless of it's tech accomplishments or shortfalls. This was my biggest issue with Driveclub. While I know lots of people on here love the game, I found it mind numbingly dull and unforgivably flawed in it's mechanics. The game itself was beautiful and had lots of great tech, however the biggest thing to me in it, the gameplay, felt off.
I play a lot of sim racers and even arcade racers (including driveclub, which I enjoy), almost every simracer you can name, iracing, Forza, GT. I play them religiously. Platinumed GT5 even. I know I'm blowing my own trumpet but I consider myself well versed when it comes to sim racers so I think I can make a judgement on the importance of framerate for me. It's important, but I don't set an arbitrary baseline whereby anything less is unacceptable and worth sacrificing gameplay modes for. 60fps is an arbitrary framerate, it correlates to nothing, nothing other than the AC power line frequency set back in the day and therefore also used in televisions. I get that higher is better, always. I just don't agree with people who value it above all else. I think it's irrational, but that's my opinion. As irrational as suggesting anything below 1080p is unacceptable. They are both the same thing too, extra information that affects gameplay in some minor way, one spatial one temporal. I think my resolution example only confuses the matter. Let me put it another way: If somebody said "Titanfall is rubbish they should not have included mechs in the game because mechs drop the framerate from 60 to 34 (it does btw) I wish they didn't include these gameplay elements and just stuck to 60fps above all else" I would disagree and maybe even think that person is slightly unreasonable. There is nothing ambitious about 60fps if you are not changing or adding to actual gameplay elements. Doing the same game every year or so would not be something I applaud even if it runs at an arbitrary 60fps. I don't think it's important enough to sacrifice advances in actual gameplay modes.