Well, when I die in a race it's due to heavy weapons fire, not hitting walls. Especially in the first lap of a race, where the pack is close together, it can easily happen that you get hit by a quake, rockets, missiles, even plasma, all within 15 seconds. Even more so when you are in the front of the pack. There's really no way to avoid that, you can't even absorb enough to avoid elimination. In this situation, the respawn comes in handy.

Maybe it would be smart to enable a respawn only for the first lap, seeing as after that, the pack is more spread out and the weapons fire is not that intense.

By the way, I have discovered the joy of Avalon racing for myself, it really is the supreme way of racing. Gets rid of the BR oversaturation as well.