ditto on the hand-brake, though I did use it for one of my runs (probably not my best one) to save from going into the illegal zone at the end of the track.
on the power-off drift, if a car has enough momentum to be carried forward, and you use steering and trail braking to get the car moved, a very tiny amount of throttle to help rotate, and lose a small amount of traction, does not seem unrealistic to me. But I am no racer and have no physics degree.
But at the same time I do have a very good layperson's understanding of physics, and it seems that there is a very small window of grip where losing it for just a moment at just the right moment, would be beneficial. Those top time-racer seemed to know how to hit that more often than the rest of us, and string a few of them into one lap better than the rest of us.
That takes a high degree of skill so I'm okay with it. If it were more of the typical and highly animated "drift" that we usually think of such as in the drift trials, then I would be the first to say it isn't realistic.
I was actually arguing the opposite until Rated-M3, who lately has probably been in real cars more than GT cars within the past year or so, was insisting it is something he and others may do to get around very tight corners.
In a race, just like the hand-brake "aid", it would not be a good idea to do. But on a time trial, the phsysics seem sound.
I still maintain that overall, GT6 penalizes loss of grip more severely than GT5 does, so I think we're in for a big improvement.
And since neither of us has final say in the physics realism of that pseudo-slide technique, I wonder if PD will simply gather all of the feedback from this demo, and some feedback post-release, to improve upon the tire model.
Don't get your hopes up, as you said, but don't count it out either