Hello and welcome to Feedback Quest 9! My name is Hythrain, and I'm one of the hosts for this lovely event! I'm also one of the streamers, so both the game and this feedback are being done live! If you want to see the see the VOD, let me know and I'll link you to it when it's uploaded to YouTube!
So admittedly, my time with this was pretty short. While it's a fun idea, there was something I immediately felt needed to be fixed when it came to the gameplay that prompted me to stop early (that and, for some reason, when I went to retry the second race the game decided to start over). Before I get to that though, there are other things to cover.
First, I wasn't able to play the game by downloading. I would get to the screen where I enter a name but nothing would happen. Of course, the real question is why I need to enter a name at all? I wonder if perhaps it was loading, as the first time I went to load a race on browser I found it seemed to freeze as well. Perhaps some loading screens would help?
Next, while this obviously isn't the focus of the game, I feel like the cutscenes could use cleaning up. There are a lot of words that can be contracted to read more naturally, and I was thrown off when characters had their names given in narration instead of being introduced properly. For example, Ryan's name shouldn't be known until Danny says who he is. That way, it all feels more natural and names are given to the player at the same time their character, Mike, is learning them. It's also weird how Danny describes how to repair your car and get coffee.
Last thing before I get into gameplay: let WASD work as well. Some people will prefer to use those instead of arrow keys because they're used to using their left hand for movement instead of their right hand, but to use arrow keys with their left hand means shifting their keyboard around.
Alright, now for gameplay. Honestly, I was surprised how smooth it controlled. It was really responsive and did a great job. I felt like any mistakes I made with steering were my own fault. I did notice that if you come to a stop and reverse a little, the turning gets mixed up until you move forward again. This makes sense if you're still moving backwards, but not if you're stationary.
One thing I found annoying, though, was how other cars would just beat the crap out of me during the race. I couldn't even get through half of the laps without losing all of of my durability from other cars smacking me around. This was especially true if I managed to get into first, which brings up another issue.
Having a racer who automatically gets to go faster than you is incredibly unfair. First off, it means they'll be running into your backside if you get into first and will drain your durability. This happened to me. Second, it makes it impossible to catch up to them if you fall behind. Even when they're bumping into things, not being in first yourself means that the other cars are smacking you around and keeping you back. This is some Mario Kart shenanigans here, but at least Mario Kart cheats only when you're in first and otherwise slows down so you can catch up.
Another issue I think exists is how wide the tracks are. Normally, racing games give very wide tracks relative to the size of one's car. Doing this gives players plenty of room to navigate around other drivers while also navigating the track. However, here the track's width feels small compared to the size of the cars. Given that crashing into other vehicles also causes durability loss, this basically guarantees you'll crash into other cars. This then puts the player at a huge disadvantage, because it's not like computer racers are going to run out of durability or stamina. These things only affect the player. The only ways to fix this would be to widen the track to perhaps double what it is or to make it that colliding with other cars doesn't touch durability. I would personally go with widening the track, but doing so exposes another issue...
The tracks are also very small. The way this is compensated is that drivers have to do more laps. However, if you widen the tracks then this'll cause some serious issues. I think making longer tracks with less laps would be better than what you have and would work better with making courses wider. Of course, I would say keep the first track you have as is, 8 laps and all. It works really well as a test course to get used to the game, but that's all it should be: a test course. Once you get into the proper races, though, there should be new tracks that are made for multiple drivers.
I hope this helps out! Good luck with the game, and feel free to let me know if you update it with some of my suggestions!