I tried it and uninstalled it after the first race. It offers almost no control on the car, you barely shift (I can't define that sloppy thing steering) it left and right and choose direction at forks plus a button for drifting and one for nitro, and it makes you watch stunts in slow motion. It made me wonder if some evil time machine brought me back to laserdisc games era...
Google Play Store listed it amogst the first choices when I looked for "racing sim"! Obviously I didn't expect a true racing sim on tablets and phones, their controls can be very good for steering, but they are very basic for everything else, but at least I expected some evolution from GT Racing 2 (my previos mobile racer, but incompatible with most new devices, including my new tablet) or Real Racing 3, that I long stopped playing due to its annoying multiple currencies system and being pissed off as back then an expensive thing I clicked by mistake made me spend too much of the rarest currency without asking for confirmation.
I ended up installing Real Racing 3 on the new device, restarting it from scratch, some flaws have been fixed, its worst flaw is that it has even too many events and a not too tidy way to organise them, it's a bloody mess, and some events unlocked early have a quite steep difficulty curve, at the beginning the player, without paying real money, has too little money to upgrade some cars enough to win some races, and not enough time either, in timed events. But the driving engine is quite good, that's the most important thing, in comparison Asphalt 9 isn't even a dog poop under its shoe.
I really can't believe the devs of GT Racing 2, that has some bugs in the interface, but a more than decent driving engine, made such a giant pile of dung...

You upgrade and get better cars and stats. It's a pretty decent game for being free.

If you write it about Real Racing 3, yes, I agree, its messy management interface is a small flaw that can be easily forgiven thanks to the good engine, nice tracks, good enough physics and huge choice of cars and events.
But in Asphalt 9 case, no, not even the widest car choice can make me forgive a sloppy and uninteresting engine that doesn't even minimally give me the feel of driving, particularly considering that better racing engines have been made in the past, with less technical and financial resources, and even on free games.
I can forgive a very limited engine in some 2D drag racers, where the fun part is actually upgrading and tweaking the cars, and starting well and timing nitro and shifting as precisely as possible is challenging anyway, but in a 3D racer I WANT to drive the car, not watch it doing things on which I have little or no control at all.

"I expected some evolution from GT Racing 2 (my previos mobile racer, but incompatible with most new devices, including my new tablet) or Real Racing 3"

Those are completely different games. Asphalt 9 is an overtop arcade racer. It's the furthest from a sim you can get.

Agreed.

I played with the manual option ( in Switch will have this option). And the game is very fun for a free game ( the seasons pass not so pricey too)

One arcade race with the good sensation of velocity. 

I have 180/200 hours in the game. 

The leagues are fun if you have friends enough or acquaintances. The events and special events are good. 

It's an arcade race game, not a sim or something like Dirt 2 or Real Racing 2( mix of sim and arcade games). 

On smartphones, you can´t play any Sim game and the best hybrid car game is Real Racing 2(EA destroy the franchise). 

There are much worse:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/793970/Super_Kids_Racing/

https://store.steampowered.com/app/842530/Police_Patrol/

Then there is garbage like this. Exploiting their dumbass kid.

I played a lot of it (about 50 hours) on the Switch when it first released there. I thought it was an absolute blast to play. Yeah the micro transactions are intense but not necessary to enjoy playing for half an hour everyday. I’m probably gonna play it again soon.

Yes, I knew from the start I couldn't expect a true racing sim on mobiles, but at best sim/arcade hybrids, and about this it wasn't Asphalt's fault but Google's to be so dumb to suggest it to me when I was asking for a sim, but this said, I played some arcade racers, and since I have a PC the ones I tried offered more user control on steering, acceleration and braking than Asphalt 9, I hadn't felt so little control on direction and so much on-rails sensation since the times of vertical scrolling racers and Laserdisc games in the coin-op era. I get there is still a market for such games, but this doesn't remove the sensation I got from it, it reminded me of that Fire Fox Laserdisc game I played the last time when I was a conscript, '89-'90 (and it was already old, but the military base was in the suburbs of a small town, and the closest arcade wasn't very up to date)...

PS By the way, I've been recently playing an almost totally arcade racer, NFS: No Limits, it's still installed on my old tablet, and even offering no user control on braking and acceleration (except nitro), it still offers a lot more control on steering than Asphalt, and a 3D and not flat and too much on-rails sensation.

If you just watched a 1 minute clip of the game before downloading it's easy to tell it's an arcade racer.