Only now, at pretty much the end of the story for Unbound, I'm starting to "get it." The game is a lot different from other NFS games in that it doesn't prioritize drift unless you're specifically in a drift event. Having a car with a good drift stat will usually mean your acceleration isn't as good, and the way drifting works here doesn't focus as much on keeping acceleration but instead building up boost by drifting to then explode out of the drift. However, if you get a car that has good acceleration you have much better handling as well, and you can e-brake to take even extremely sharp corners then accelerate to go much faster than the competition through turns.

It's honestly really weird, and much different than what I'm used to. Now that I know what I'm doing though, I'm lapping AI drivers with ease.

By the way, none of this is explained to you at all. I didn't even know the boost outright changed the physics until I watched a video on it.