I got you covered OP because I actually went on a binge of rally games when I started following this year's WRC season in February., I went all the way back to CMR 2.0 and worked my way up to the most recent rally games.
To be quite honest, if you just want a fun, light, arcade-like experience, then you can seek out a copy of CMR 2.0 online because it's still a really fun game to play. CMR 2005 also stood out to me as really fun if you want something with slightly better visuals.
As far as modern rally games go, Dirt Rally 2.0 is king. It's even on sale right now:
It has a great career mode in which you work your way through historical periods of the sport from the classic cars from the 70s all the way to the modern day (at least up until the game was released). It has a wide variety of accessibility and customization options too, which means that it's just as fun to play in VR with a professional racing wheel for complete immersion, as it is if you play it casually on a gamepad.
The official FIA WRC games are also decent, with 8 and 9 probably being the best.
Although if you have the option then I would still go with Dirt Rally 2.0 because it's just a better game. The physics in the WRC series always felt a little wonky for me tbh.
Lastly, there's the Dirt Rally series, but that one has almost nothing to do with traditional WRC sport and it's more like a casual arcade racer that just happens to have various dirt racing cars in it.
