The amount of users which are using advanced physics (other than boxes and spheres) in their applications was always relative low. Since A8 introduced PhysX, I believe there are less people who try to work out car physics.

Given a physics engine, especially a realistic simulation can be achieved, while it is super hard to have full control over the vehicle from a programmers point of view - you have always sort of indirect control with a physics engine. Especially when you try to code AI opponents. If done sophisticated and with some experience you will get a robust vehicle (meaning that it doesn't flip all the time in curves) and last but not least, if you it well, due to the physics-approach it might be fun for the player, too.

If you do a script-based "physics"-simulation (with the c_) instructions, you have full control, but making a realistic simulation is a lot of work. Due to the full control, it is also very robust and programming becomes easier, just rethink about AI

But in all cases I doubt that a script based approach will be ever realistic and as long as you want to achieve that, you will better use a native physics-implentation for a vehicle, I suppose.

I am currently working on a PhysX-driven vehicle simulation, but

1) It deals only with one vehicle
2) It is a heavy vehicle and
3) It is a slow vehicle.

But nevertheless, I am confronted with much issues as well. One of the requirements is that the vehicle will brake and will stand still automatically, when no gas is used. That was more work for me to figure out how I should do this compared to build the whole physics setup and make it work (it is a vehicle with several constraints, an attached trailer and a different way of steering).

Nevertheless: especially on high speeds things become tricky. In commercial productions, like those F1 games (you showed a video of a F1 racing sim of your own), there is a lot of work put into making those physics simulations... in the end it is ALL ABOUT that physics simulation of the F1 cars. So, you might guess how much work is put into that and I suppose you need to do lots of work in order to achieve nearly the same with PhysX. Not because PhysX is bad, but because it is always hard work to achieve good & stable physics and physics, which are at the end fun as well.

So, short answer: Yes, I believe you can do modern, advanced car racing physics with PhysX in A8, but you will have to invest large amounts of blood, sweat and tears

...like in every game dev project