Yeah the 2048 ships make me sick too.
But seriously, I always race internal view and the cockpit displays make it far easier for my brain to decide where the ship is in relation to the track than in games where there is simply "internal view" with no HUD curvature or the like to "mark" the centre and edges of what I imagine to be the nose/edges of the ship. Without something like that to centre your vision on it gets rather difficult to switch from ship to ship, as opposed to external view where you see how the ship is handling from an outside perspective.

Short version: I wish cockpit view came back, even in pasted-over-nosecam version.