Just to be clear, this has been discussed many times before, and yes "reluctant" is a reasonable description, because...
As mentioned already, some players are totally into realism, and want a real world experience. You say "it's simulated racing" but what is the purpose of simulating a real world activity if you break the rules of physics?
Now, to balance the discussion... There are also many players (perhaps not represented euqually on this forum) who just want to play a GAME. In this case, your ghosting suggestion is entirely reasonable. So much so that you will notice that in the Daily A races (which typically feature slower cars and no impact on your DR/SR) the ghosting is strong, and often avoids the catastrophic escalation of crashes... Conversely in World Final events, ghosting is usually turned off completely.
Essentially it comes down to how YOU want to play... Is it a game, or a sim? Are you a "professional sim racer" (cough cough) or a car enthusiast who prefers to spend a few hundred dollars on a PlayStation rather than many thousands on a real world racing car? Are you racing in VR and want full realism, or are you happy with a controller and flat screen TV?
Depending how a person answers the above questions, will probably correlate with their opinion on ghosting.
Regarding the "algorithm" itself, have you considered the difficulty in allowing for internet lag? There are times when cars glitch into new locations, effectively at infinite speed. An accurate calculation of momentum might be more difficult than you think, if you consider the internet challenges.