Especially the "controlling the car" bit seems to be what many players struggle with at the start, so we are consìdering slowing the cars down at the beginning to allow for easier access. Again, thanks for your feedback, it's very valuable!
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.