The first thing you should understand is about how the difficulty settings work. This is something that even sites reviewing the game seem to have missed and the game perhaps misrepresents. And that is that they're not really difficulty settings, but speed classes akin to Mario Kart's 50/100/150cc. I recommend simply jumping into the deep end of Expert difficulty, because the game is fundamentally different in the lower speed tiers. At such low speeds drifting doesn't seem to be particularly useful, the slipstream effect is much more pronounced, and boosting is more powerful relative to total speed. This results in races where it is almost impossible to break away from the pack because you can never really get so far ahead people can't catch your slipstream. On Expert difficulty the game seems to play much more like you assume it should. Slipstreams and boosts are less powerful, drifting is more useful and indeed required for managing most corners, and the pack tends to spread out more. This makes the game feel less 'rubber-bandy', which is something a lot of people seem to be complaining about.