I brought it up because:
1) a lot of people seem to have complained about this and
2) it seems like it would be an easy enough thing to change.
Personally, I dislike the "pit screen" because whenever you throw a "human being" on screen it looks very fake, even in games with much more sophisticated graphics than AC. I'm perfectly fine with no animation in the stands, for instance - that just seems like a waste of development time & computing power to me. I'd rather have the focus on the core physics & FFB & AI .. which is basically what AC has delivered.
What has always made me crazy is people's expectation that they can have everything in a game: great physics, great graphics, great AI, a thousand cars, scores of tracks, weather, TOD etc. etc. As GT has proved time & again, something has to give. I'm happy with the balance that AC has struck, but would be looking for improvements over time.