I see what you are saying and I agree the visual cues will be in one direction, but do the thing where you use the right stick, move the view around, do this while going around a turn. All the visual cues still say the direction the car is going, but your brain has to adjust to the new angle, and without momentum to help, it takes a second of watching what happens to get a good feel on the direction you are now going. Do that dynamically and it gets hard, essentially building a lag into your physical response as you try to steer. Try it with the right stick TRACKIR method, the wii tracking method is no where near as dissoreienting but you will see what I am saying abuot the fact that your eyes depend heavily on static fallbacks to judge change in direction.
BTW another thing to think about, I know when I play with a wheel, I tend to lean pretty heavily into curves. I mean my body actually leans, I don't know if that's just me, but if you turn left and lean left (as I do) that's going to result in seeing less of the upcoming turn as your view will shift to show you more of the right side of the road.
Watch johnny lees video, imagine on screen is a curve going to the left, when he leans left, the apex and distant parts of that curve will go off the left side of the screen.