They will slide around a corner if properly coaxed, respond to acceleration and braking realistically and bottom out over a big jump. In the championship mode there are several seasons. Each season adds a new course to race on. Thus the first season has two races, the second three, and so on. Prior to racing you can choose your tire setup and shock stiffness depending on the surface conditions of the course and choose a car to drive.
Various cars have different characteristics, primarily different top speeds and acceleration rates.
In the beginning you only have access to the slowest cars, with each championship season won two more are unlocked. You can also choose to race with either a manual or automatic transmission. In extended use I found that a joystick was the best for overall control. Perhaps unintuitively a racing wheel was by far the worst. Using a force feedback wheel, even with force feedback turned off, was so hard that I gave up.