After an hour long session this morning (my second after the update), I'd have to agree with most of your observations that there are more mines and bombs now, than there were previously. In last night's session there was one stand out race on Ubermall where there was an extremely high count of eliminations - this was noted by other racers in that game. There was another race on Chengou Project (4 laps) where I was eliminated 3 times, the first of which was just at the beginning of the 2nd lap - I'm not the greatest pilot by any stretch but I can never remember that happening to me before.

Someone else has noted (either in this thread or another) that it is harder to break free from the pack. I'd have to agree with that too - not that it doesn't happen, but this morning I was in several races that were very congested for a long time.

The update has introduced some good features: friend invites, rating system, and ability to see all games just to name a few, but if what we have observed turns out to be an attempt to level the playing field by the developers, lets hope they reverse those particular changes.