I agree with a lot of the points, in fact I think they did miss a trick in offline races, as they could easily have themed the dirt races in a rally style, for example by making championships stage-based, with the end of one event being the start of the next, taking diversions for races/eliminators as and when. essentially making championships progress logically.
I'm all for the individual races, using solar crown as championships to enter once you're a bit more notorious.
Essentially, I think that what is wrong with the game is that no-one actually played it. For example I can't think anyone would program the stickers shop, test it and go 'yeah, this is fine, this doesn't need to be less twitchy, have less restrictive dimensions and have more controls than 'undo'. Or played the 'story' without thinking 'well, this is naff' or 'wow, maybe we should record more dialogue' or 'does every single class really need exactly the same license tests?'