Weird physics hurting realism in FH5

I’m curious has anyone else noticed these when going from FH4 to FH5, some really weird decisions made by the devs that I can’t make sense of.

I’ll start by saying I always play as realistic as I can, manual w/clutch. Obviously Forza isn’t a sim but one thing I always and still love about FH4 was nailing the physics for the most part. I’ve raced / drifted cars IRL for over a decade so any sort of realism is my favourite in any racing game.

I’m personally not a huge fan of FH5 I think it’s the most boring and lifeless map / title of the entire franchise so far but having paid for the Welcome Pack and feeling like I never gave the game a fair try, I’ve been grinding through it lately.

Some of the poor dev decisions and physics I’ve noticed are:

• Gearbox doesn’t grind anymore if you don’t clutch in before shifting.
• Shifting while in manual w/clutch is terrible, you have to let off the accelerator for way too long to avoid it bouncing off the limiter randomly.
• Drifting and the driving in general seems a bit more “arcadey” than it was previously. Things like virtually “dumping the clutch” to initiate a drift doesn’t work half as well.
• Even revvy 4 cylinders, the likes of your K20s, SR20 cars etc feel very dreary, the revs almost feel delayed in all cars.
• Again when drifting while changing gear or clutching in to rev match is borderline impossible to nail while in FH4 it was buttery.
• I love road racing and in FH4 I felt there was a great sense of the car being planted and how weight transfer, braking etc affected it into corners where as now in FH5 again, I feel like it just glides along.

• Tyre smoke is awful between the glitchy movements you can see through the back window and the tyre smoke I feel like it’s a huge downgrade.

• Granted I could definitely be in the minority here and it’s very much an objective view but it’s driving me insane so I had to share it with the sub and see am I the only one haha.