There's a reason nobody had made a 'real world' kart racer before. Bizarre Creations, a studio I have infinite love for given that they made Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved 2, have made a valiant attempt, but they've missed what made the genre so fun in the first place. Flow.
In Mario Kart, and the sadly under-rated Crash Team Racing, you put the pedal to the metal and don't ease off it. The beauty of this is that it provides the game with unstoppable momentum. The karts have a finely tuned jump and drift move that maintains your speed while carving a satifying curve through any corner. This is a fantastic replacement for braking, which stymies the flow of the races and doesn't at all mesh with the weapon battling side of the game. With more realistic maneuvering comes more chance of game ending mistakes and adapting to sudden changes like a shunt or a danger in the road ahead requires far faster reactions and much more work.
Also in order to improve the flow, classic kart games feature weapons that, while often random and unbalanced, don't disrupt competing players' fun. Being hit by a weapon will have a penalty, but the player will always end up facing in the right direction. They will spin out or slow down, but they will drive out of it and carry on. In Blur however, they will spin out or slow down, be forced to make a painful three point turn, drive out of it and carry on in a significantly worse position than they were before. And then get hit by something else.
The point is, random punishment and complicated handling don't go hand in hand. Even wipeout, a game with far more emphasis on racing technique than a kart racer, made large concessions regarding control because it dealt with weapon combat and destruction. Blur is a polished game, but nevertheless its frustrating lack of flow stops it short of brilliance.
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