nope, not for everyone, i can't drive the ship well with sticks, i use only d-pad (pitch too, i removed motion sensors from ds3 to make it lighter), especially on phantom! as JF said, it's subjective
aaaaaand also no, still subjective; imho. i used to play d-pad since first wipeouts on ps1, and i use d-pad for every race game played on console, i get waaaay better lines with d-pad since i used it for years, and execute good BRs meanwhile....learned more faster than the sticks. i had decent times with it...
depends on the player, on which game style you feel more comfortable, if you play well and feel good with sticks, you'll never play good with d-pad and viceversa.
also i don't think me and JF are the only in top 10\20 that used d-pad, if i'm not wrong Lilith maybe uses it?