While in Simulation mode without driving assists and at the mercy of weather and vehicle failure, success truly has to be earned. Sudden changes in speed and orientation can throw off the rear end of your car and send you into a spin. Even tiny bumps and pushes against opponents can also cause you to lose complete control and smash into the barriers.
Damage is determined accurately depending on the speed and location of the impact.
You can scrape up your right-front, putting a little bend in the hood, or you can blow a tire and wreck the engine so horribly that the fuel leaks. The point is that each part of the vehicle is independent of the rest. The cars move as a sum of parts, not as one part as in many other sims. Hey, it isn't so difficult to do another ten laps without having to stare at your sponsor's image the entire time. A minor bug that we did stumble across during testing is the ease of riding the wall around the circuit.