Minor frustrations hold this back from being a great racer
I'll start with the bad: At the beginning of every "World Tour" championship, you start out in the rear of the pack, which is to be expected. This presents the first hurdle in enjoying this game: Vehicle damage is unrealistic, and extremely easy to acquire, so much so that it is unfairly forced onto you. Simply tapping or rubbing lightly on cars damages you constantly (accompanied by a sound of a door slamming) and the part of your car that is damaged just doesn't make sense- for instance, as you're turning a corner and an opponent turns a bit sharper than you do and lightly bumps into the side of your car, your transmission will take damage. Tap the car ahead of you that you're trying to pass? Your motor takes severe damage, even if you're in a rear or mid-engined vehicle.
The key to winning in this game is to fight your way to the front of the pack without having your car rendered undriveable, and stay in first while the pack bumps into each and keep themselves behind. The other factor that works against you is the camera angle, because turns come up on you very quickly at 140mph, so you've constantly got to be watching the other screen for when you're getting close to a turn. This detracts from overall immersion, as you can imagine. One bad turn can not only put you in last place quickly, but also total your car.
One thing i love about GT style games, is that in most of them you get to purchase and own different vehicles, and buy parts for them to improve their performance. That is not the case here. RD:C&R lets you do no such thing, instead, every set of races you start is focused around 2 or three different cars, but only one is ever actually available for you to drive.
There is a good thing about this game though- the Track Editor. It's pretty detailed and easy to customize, and you've got a lot of track peices to work with. But then when you go to race on your custom track- you don't get to choose the car you use!
Overall, its the little annoyances like that, crappy collision damaging, and lack of seeing distances that hold this back from being way cooler. Do yourself a favor and pass this up. I'd suggest checking out it's bigger brother, Grid.