That’s a shame! There is a way to “cheese” them. Find/mod a car for drifting (drift tires/drift slider) I’ve used some of the drift setup cars you get rewarded for this - Subaru BRZ or one of the RWD Nissans for example. I recommend using the gas tap method for getting into your drifts (to maintain momentum), and as you come out of corners, you can wiggle the steering (small amounts) to maintain drifts between gates! Almost drifting in a straight line. Over using this will slow you down and miss timers, but a blend of corner drifting into “straight” drifting like this can easily get you first place in drift events, or beating the npc drift score challenges. Hope this helps!
And as Minigun says above, you can also repeatedly tap nitrous between drifts to maintain your combo scores in takeover events 👍
