On the subject of damage, realism is nice and having more options for everybody is great, but I personally would be about as happy with no damage modelling at all. Other things are more important to me in a racing sim. I guess I feel that once a collision or something has occurred, the time lost is punishment enough, and since there are already no "real" consequences in a videogame, damage is just annoying more than anything else.
WMD members know as much as we do. In theory, if motion steering turns out to be viable, you could use each joystick as the brake and throttle independently. Any digital inputs (face buttons, keyboard) have a gradual response rate on the steering and pedals, like a typical PC sim, so the ZL/ZR triggers might be the default setting.
I personally never left-foot brake in real life, so the right analog stick solution is actually a little more realistic for me when driving anything that isn't a go-kart or formula car.
I don't mind letting the game handle rev-match downshifting for me when I'm not using a wheel+pedals.