I would suggest the following.

1) no weapon assistance, speed assistance, etc to the person in behind, or at the very least have an option to turn it off

2) make sure taking a turn perfectly is faster than riding a wall

3) pitch control bring you higher off the track as in WOXL

4) have ship be higher off the ground than that video and have a floaty feeling

5) have the faster, worse turning ships be have faster lap times if piloted perfectly, as the slippery ships are hard to keep off the walls. They should be a decent amount faster as you are more likely to hit the wall. Have a good risk/reward feature for choosing the good ship.

6) Don't have weapons slow you down too much, but have it more being a energy management issue instead. There are far too many times in any of wopure, wopulse and wohd where one weapon hit means you lose. XGRA may be a good example of this. If a turbo feature similar to Quantum Redshift is employed, you can use your turbo immediately after slowing down as long as you have saved some. The risk/reward is excellent in this game. "Should I use up the turbo to get away, or save some in case of weapon hits, or somewhere in between".