Yeah, it seems that way. Still it's not like quick race in open world is impossible. We had them in NFS Most Wanted, Carbon, Undercover.
Yeah and I hate this open world type tracks. Last NFS game I truly enjoyed was NFS Hot Pursuit 2 because that game had good cars and had different tracks instead of one single open world where most of the tracks look same.
I've pretty much lost faith in NFS games and the last game I actually bought was NFS Shift. This is also the reason I skipped Forza Horizon 3 and 4 since I heard those games don't have any mode equivalent to quick race. Welp, it can't be helped. I'll have to play NFS 2 instead.