IMO, there are much, much worse tourney games! I think this might be one of the better ones actually, particularly with this lineup (Mortal Kombat on Very Hard for score? Come off it!)
Going slow is an important strategy, but if you go TOO slow, a cloud of bees comes at you, so it's not without risk and you have to balance speed against the bee problem.
However, you're right about it being problematic for tournaments in the sense that the game is harder on anything other than original controls. I've been struggling with it a bit, but I played at California Extreme yesterday on a cab, and even with the true "bike" controls being a little loose and not calibrated perfectly, game just plays much better on original controls. I was doing better straight away. No way of filming attempts though.