It's a sim as plain as that, most of the videos and such show the driver using aids and such and as for the bumping (nudging) his way through, well that's racing, watch the BTCC or WTCC, scraping against your opponent, putting your nose down the inside, getting the door closed on you etc is racing. F1 is mainly a babied form of racing because the cars are so fragile but touring cars, no way and that's why myself personally love it!
Of course the console version isn't going to be 100% comparable with the PC snobs but for a console it will do a damn fine job, finally a racing game that's all about racing!
Remember this is their first console attempt so they will test the waters in allowing the casual to the hardcore to play this game as they wish, it's upto the player to choose how the game responds to them and their skillset. Also remember that video was offline play, check any other game even PC sims' offline gameplay and I'm sure you'll see plenty of other people doing exactly the same thing.