I think that the car can be driven with a lot of certainty. The driving is on a coarse grid with the speed on each axis independent, so it's quite easy to calculate the stopping distance on each axis and the optimal trajectory in the next few turns.
That's in contrast with a turn-based racing game not on a coarse grid, like Turn Based Racing, which is much harder because counting squares isn't possible and the shape of the possible positions in the next turn is quite irregular there.