After several hours of play, I realize that there is still a problem in the balancing of the handling of the vehicle.
In fact, on dry surfaces the vehicle seems to slip too easily (although this is understandable for powerful engines, it is less so for others) and where it's rainy, it is practically non-drivable.

I understand that the base of the game comes from a former drift game but isn't that too pronounced for a rally game?

Glad I tried the demo, that handling is just awful.

It's not. You just have to get used to it. When I tried the demo I was 5+ minutes behind and super frustrated. Now, just by casually playing career, I'm getting into top 10 in the online leaderboards for some tracks.

The cars handle differently, so you need to find the right car for you in each group.You also MUST tune the gameplay settings to suit your driving style. I'm playing with stability assist at 100%, because I'm using a keyboard, but a lot of people prefer it at 0%. If you're using a controller, you also need to tune the deadzones and sensitivity in advanced controls. So initial setup takes a bit of time until you figure out what works best for you.

Also because of the top-down camera there are two things to keep in mind. First, the elevation of the terrain - if you ignore it, you're in for a bad time. Second, the feeling of speed. Because you're looking at a huge part of the road regardless of the fov, by the time it feels like you're going fast (compared to other games with chase and cockpit cam), you're already going too fast and you're very likely to lose control.

BTW handling and jumping are improved a lot compared to the demo. Also in the latest version there is another camera position (camera 1) which is closer to chase cam and you're getting more "natural" feeling for the speed.