Having one super weapon (like Quake) is fine as long as the pickup rate is low and as long as you don't feel committed to use that weapon to win a race. When the Quake first appeared in WipEout 2097, it was a very powerful weapon visually speaking but gameplay speaking it was sometimes less powerful than the Turbo weapon (which has never been questioned). The only issue about Quake was its high damage : with good configuration (i.e. lots of ships close to you in front of you), having two Quakes in a row often ended in a multikill, and hearing the computer saying "con-con-contender eliminated-ted-ted" was so hilarious. But this configuration was rare and picking two Quakes was even more rare so this was a fun bonus and not really a gamebreaking design.

To my mind, weapons like Plasma Bolt are much more game-breaking as it leaves the target almost no option but dying. Instakill attacks (or almost-insta) are not fun in games where death ends the match, such as in WipEout.