That makes sense, I saw the score bonus was changing but I assumed it was just random because I didn't play enough to notice the connection. I'll come back and play some more later, I liked making the little car scoot around even though I wasn't very good at controlling it.
Specifically what was hard to me about controlling was knowing what direction I would turn, because left/right make you turn different directions screen-wise depending on whether the car is facing up or down, and then they get swapped again if you're moving in reverse. So when I wanted to turn I would basically just guess randomly whether to use left or right and then switch if I was going the wrong direction.