Yes new people go slow but people with actual skill arnt going slow at all. 40-50 in a slide is not all that easy. I don't consider it a sport but its fun. I don't consider time attack a motor sport so why shouldn't drifting be any different on comparison. One you're trying to maintain the car on one particular line on the track trying to get the best time where is drifting is based more on style and speed. Being able to go fast and carry momentum into a full lock slide.
Since you don't like drifting I wouldn't think you would get the comparison. Just because one doesn't like baseball doesn't mean it's not a hard sport to play. I'm just stating what I've seen and what I've seen is a closely built ka will out do the sr simply because it doesn't have the low trq needed to carry the momentum through the turns so we have to rely on its ability to rev really high. So every transition I'm having to match rev and keep my rev really high in between clutch kicks. If the ka is built your not having to worry about that since the low end trq is like a crutch giving I don't have to rev so high all the time. You can deff tell they created the ka for trucks in mind. It's very responsive on the low end.