I just installed the game on linux, the game starts and shows me the epilepsy warning screen and tells me to press A.
When I press A on the keyboard nothing happens.
When I press A on my gamepad nothing happens (it’s a GameSir G3W).
When I click the mouse nothing happens.
When I press anything I can think of nothing happens.
When I unplug my gamepad and restart the game, it still tells me to press A and ignores all input.
When I kill xboxdrv and restart the game, same.

Is there a way to play this game?

Edit: I may have an unusual configuration since I had to kill xpad and use xboxdrv to get the analog triggers to work as analog triggers and not binary buttons in some other racing game (Dirt Rally?). The xboxdrv command line I use is:

xboxdrv --evdev /dev/input/by-id/usb-Xiaoji_Gamesir-G3w-event-joystick --evdev-keymap BTN_A=a,BTN_B=b,BTN_X=x,BTN_Y=y,BTN_START=start,BTN_SELECT=back,BTN_THUMBL=tl,BTN_THUMBR=tr,BTN_TL=lb,BTN_TR=r b --evdev-absmap ABS_GAS=rt,ABS_BRAKE=lt,ABS_X=x1,ABS_Y=y1,ABS_Z=x2,ABS_RZ=y2,ABS_HAT0X=dpad_x,ABS_HAT0Y=dpad_y --axismap -y1=y1,-y2=y2 --mimic-xpad --deadzone 2560

To be honest I find xboxdrv quite confusing.

Oh well, the game starts when I use my Playstation 2 gamepad. I guess it only supports a tiny amount of gamepads and has no keyboard support at all.

The DS2 has no analog triggers though; I wonder if the game uses that or not.