I think turning off Lite Steering helped a lot, but the rest of the issues with the physics like shooting off into the stratosphere and underwater segments still suck. I'm not sure how to feel about the rings, on one hand it feels nice to have some kind of boost mechanic to get out of rough terrain, add some oomph to a drift or overtake someone ahead of you, but on the other having none from getting assailed by items or running into hazards slows the game to a crawl. This is especially frustrating if you're at the bottom of a hill now that you can't just accelerate up it, or in said rough terrain. Thematically it reminds me of the special stages in Sonic Heroes where you're collecting orbs to keep boosting.
The respawn system is neat but pretty broken with how overzealous it is and that it just lets you skip segments of the track. It makes a sort of sense that it dumps you further ahead so you can end up closer to the racers passing you by, but it's so exploitable and control is taken from the player for much longer than in srb2kart it's frustrating.
The changes to old items are a mixed bag, I like how Hyuudoro and Shrink work now, but Jawz, Grow and especially Invincibility were all changed for the worse. Grow doesn't make you invincible anymore and Invincibility lasts much longer than in srb2kart, it's ridiculous. The manual item roulette system doesn't help either, you can easily get and stack Invincibilities if you're a little behind and just fly through the track. I think the silver lining to it is the effect when you collide with hazards where you destroy it with a Street Fighter parry. The manual item roulette was a mistake.
The new items like the Bumper, Spike Mine, Fire Shield, and Bubble Shield are great, although the Mine and Bubble Shield might feel redundant with the Banana. The Marble Garden Top though sucks ass, it controls worse than it does in Sonic 3 if you can believe that. it's novel but it is not the comeback item it's intended to be.
The new tracks are pretty fun if claustrophobic, except for Death Egg. That track was not meant to be played by multiple people at once. The old track remakes are okay, I just don't like the visual design changes and that they shrunk the tracks, it feels very weird having barely any room to maneuver.
Last thing on my mind is the trick system. Instead of tricking off of any vertical ascent like the mod for srb2kart, you can only trick off of very specific jumps which mappers may not and often don't include in their tracks. I preferred the freedom to choose when to do tricks and enjoyed seeking out opportunities to do them in unconventional places in tracks. The trick action itself is also very rigid and prone to fucking you over if you don't approach the jump perfectly.
With that said I'd like to try the game again once Nepfag here >>243915 makes a release and see if that alleviates my frustration with the game. If I had to choose between someone hosting this or srk2kart again I'd choose srb2kart in a heartbeat.