Apparently only the qualifying was in 3D, the actual race was in 2D and there weren't even any curves (at least not visible ones, although it looks like the player had to steer from time to time going by some cues which I wasn't able to make out). The race wasn't really challenging either - the player started last, but was able to overtake all opponents in 30 seconds, same after the pitstop... but maybe the image they found was just a debug build, I guess the game would have gone through some more playtesting and fine-tuning if it had been released.