just some suggestions on what you could try to do without breaking the style too much
with and without the road pattern
I'm guessing the game is straight ahead no turning, some suggestions in the edit also is to have 3 driver states for turning, hope it's illustrated okay, depends on how much effort you are putting into it,
oh yeah one issue is the wheels they are too light on the shadow side of the car so you should darken them to contrast with the shadows.
oh and found this old one of mine from a game of mine, might inspire some ideas or something
I like the damage idea, and you got it having his HP bar on the HUD itself would be the way to go
*crap inadvertantly mirrored it back with the shadows on the red car meh here to illustrate the general idea