apparently if you rebind controls to a gamepad it doesn't fall back to default keyboard controls (and there's no mouse input available) if that gamepad is not connected, so, cool 🤷🏻‍♀️

UPDATE: the PC port is so bad that this is much better played on console, or via Game Pass streaming; constant latency is better than the intermittent stutter it does on PC. underneath it is a kind of decent and entertaining racer, just a shame it's nigh-unplayable natively on PC