"Nothing in it" usually means one car on the other side to most people.
The car on the other side is an asshole, and there's no way to tell which exit is theirs.
Nobody uses their blinkers in a roundabout like they're supposed to in order to indicate this (blink towards the center to indicate staying in, blink towards the outside to indicate leaving).
From a gamedev perspective it wouldn't make sense to call what was happening "classic". It was unintended behavior.
What would make more sense would be to make a setting to allow or disable the intermission sections of the race (they'd need to think of another name for them though because they call the wait time between races intermissions in the settings already). Allow players to keep or remove the long stretches.
The king's chariot cannot be stopped