You bring up a really interesting point about the controls. I was thinking myself that the first thing that would need to be implemented would be better feedback: car moving animations so you can clearly see what each movement input does, animations for crashing into a wall and smoke rising from the bonnet to show you that you are now immobile (and choice sound effects for everything too). Once great feedback was in, how people would then review the controls would be most useful, imo.
We'll defo take into consideration your point if we do expand the game; not everyone wants the controls to just be made easy and your mistakes to be without consequence, as you say