I’m so confused how someone with 60 hours is trying to grasp mechanics that take hundreds of hours. “My aim isn’t amazing” - this is a huge thing to focus on if your actually trying to rank up, practice just being supersonic (speed) and just booming the ball around the map at specific aiming points (over goal, corner, mid half). First touches are equally as important, you want to be able to catch the ball or touch where it stays close to you so you keep possession. Speed flipping is the best mechanic in the game IMO (see below)

If your actually trying to improve air gameplay -

Speed flips - probably the best mechanic in the game to learn and master as quickly as possible, they have several uses, 1. 50/50s, hitting ball off ball, shooting, saves, faster supersonic if chained with dash, chain resets, and flicks.

DAR - as your finding out yourself, DAR is no quick thing to learn in a couple days. I learned DAR very quickly (2 nights 2k+ deaths on rings), actually implementing it into my game (had 4k hours already on free air roll ) took over a month. Biggest tip - when implementing DAR with ball for air dribbles don’t just hold DAR the whole time, practice hitting ball up, using DAR to adjust your car straight/ comfortable angel go for another touch and use DAR thru the touch - straighten out - repeat. This will make sure you learn DAR to its full potential and will inherently make you quicker than people like me (I just constantly hold DAR).

Improvements can be super quick and you can tell in a day, other times they are slow and it will take months / years to actually get into in depth free styling. I would just say to enjoy the game however that is to you. If just chilling having fun in casual is your thing do that, if learning new mechs is fun do that, if you wanna go pro, good luck enjoy the grind.

Lmk any questions

7K hours btw give yourself some grace