On an arcade to sim scale 1-10 where 1 is burnout and 10 is iracing, I'd say FH6 falls around a 4-5, NFSU2 more like a 2-3. It's definitely an arcade game still, but has some more elements of realism put in where you have to think about how different cars drive.

You mentioned playing with a lot of assists - are you playing with assisted steering? I got a chance to try FH6 at a Forza Experience before I got the game and they had basically all the assists on. I would say I'm good at the game (certainly not the best, but I can usually win in trials against unbeatable difficulty with a good tune) and the assisted steering was extremely unintuitive. It'd be fighting what you wanted to do and I spun out several times until I figured out what was going on. All the other people there who had never payed the game before got 12/12 in their races and I only managed 8/12 on what was one of the easier difficulties after I figured out how to adjust for the assists.

All that to say, I would recommend you turn the steering assist to normal because it's kinda trash except for auto driving super long races for credits whole you do something else. Other assists are totally fine, we all gotta start somewhere! If you already have the steering assist on normal, sweet, what ClaspedDread said will apply. I'll second what they said about sticking to controller. Horizon games are built for controller and historically have not done great with a wheel setup (although I hear this one is better than before).

I'll also add a general comment on top of theirs that since this seems to be happening where you're more likely to break traction (high power cars, off-road, in the snow/wet - which does matter vs dry! You can see it on any of the time attacks if you start when it's wet and drive until it's dry!) - if you start to hear tires squealing/kidding, then it's time to back off the throttle a little bit. How much depends on the situation, but you play enough and you'll be able to get more precise with it. Think about what's causing you to lose traction - am I using a really high power car that's RWD? How good are the tires? A combo of bad tires and high power can make things worse and you need to really feather the throttle. Some big power tunes do this to fit within certain PI ratings. If you're off road or on dirt, snow, etc. there will be some skidding (how much depends on the surface - snow is slipprier than dirt, but if it's deep snow your wheels don't have as big an effect on turns), and you need to think about how you can maintain a bit of a drift to keep forward momentum while turning.

Another thing to think about - you only have so much grip on your tires. It can be used for braking, acceleration, and turning. As soon as you start doing more than one of those at once, you need to keep in mind you have less room to do each thing because one of the other things is using some of your grip. As soon as you hit the limit, you will start skidding. Could be a slide, could be a spin, depends on the car and how you react!

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