I hate to say it, but after having hands-on time with Drive Club it's not even a contender.

I wrote my hands on impressions in another thread:

Sounds like it to sim for you not enough arcade or to much hmm not sure.  I crash hard into them and hardly get a penalty when i do i knew i would.

There are frustrations but for me they are similar to sim games.  The only legit frustration i have is no reply button, some times i screw up late and the race is wasted.  Other wise its all easy, use a good line and all the issues you have will be gone.  

Iv never got a penalty for the ai hitting me, and i race as if its bumper care lol.  A habbit from old GT games.  

Better driving skills.

Like what? In Driveclub you have to know how to take a corner, what the conditions are on that corner, what sort of surface is either side of that corner, when to reduce speed, break, accelerate out of that corner, what line another driver might take on the same corner while you are considering your options, when to put your foot down and when to play it safe, to name but a few. In Horizon you have to hope someone has a slower car than you, avoid the trees, hope the wheat doesn't hold you up, hope another driver hits that tree you avoided, to name but a few. One of those is a skilled based racer and the other is a driving game.

Like I said before 75% of the races only take place on roads so most of the stuff you mentioned doesn't come into play and on top of that you need driving skills to avoid major obstacles like trees and the like.  You can't just cut corners left and right because every course be it all roads or a mix of on road and off road has numerous check points you need to drive through.

Ok, so we've established that to be a skilled based racing game, Horizon has to be like Driveclub, which is a 100% skill based racing game. Now we've established that, I expect the argument that Horizon is a better 'racing' game because you can drive through corn fields will stop.

Lol whatever, only because the cars in Horzion 2 are upgradable and tuneable doesn't mean that its not a skill based game.  If you want more of a skill based challenge then don't upgrade your car and up the difficulty of the AI and turn off all the driving assists.

Like I said before 75% of the races only take place on roads so most of the stuff you mentioned doesn't come into play and on top of that you need driving skills to avoid major obstacles like trees and the like.  You can't just cut corners left and right because every course be it all roads or a mix of on road and off road has numerous check points you need to drive through.

So basically you're taking the skill based typical on road racing elements and combining them with the strategy and exhilaration of offroad racing, without any speed penalties or countdowns for actually you know, racing.

No wonder it scored so much better.

But, like you said, if you up the difficulty and turn off the driving assists, to test yourself as a skilled driver, you HAVE to race within the limitations of a road just like you have to in Driveclub. Why then is Horizon a better 'racing' game than Driveclub because clearly, the moment you start ploughing through a corn field, it's no longer a 'racing' game because you need the limitations of the road for it to be defined as such. Basically Horizon doesn't know what it's meant to be.