Really, first rule of vehicles on a game...
Graphics, yeah good.
Acting, ace.
Driving and all aspects of it, absolute rubbish.
Controls and input, fair
Havok and all these dated engines need improving, Ubi is the same. Not really pushing anything with there games, all made and sold to a small budget rather that tweaking and improving things, like a car hitting top spead in seconds and years just constantly going up. Along with rubbish floaty handling. And that side handbrake thing is just stupid. Maybe combining a decent handbrake to do it would have made more sense.
As for controls, Xbox controller is compatible. Including the visual interpretations of buttons not like Shift 2 etc. I do sense when fighting that combinations, or order of next move is as smoth as it could be. Kinda lags, plus you need to plan when to press the buttons as it seems it will respond only during idle moments, when your making a move the next button seems useless.
Hurumph...