Oh happy day - another reply from Sony at their tech support forum :
Now now!
WipEout is a revolutionary concept. It's in the name of the game and every part of it's concept. You can't expect any game to be flawless at any stage, otherwise you're living in Cloud Cukooland.
If you don't like it, don't play it. Simple.
There's bugs. They'll work on fixing them until the end of the products life. As almost all devs do.
I really don't know if I should laugh or cry...
Edit : I should be banging my head against the wall. Turns out I've been arguing with another player, not a Sony stooge as I thought.

(I should have caught on earlier - getting a reply at all should have been a big red flag.

)