I never played Payback, but does the handling allow more modulation than 2015? It was either understeer or automatic drifting. I miss older NFS games which had a much wider range of both driving styles and allowed one to modulate slides way more.
This is my biggest problem with modern NFS games. They have just gone mostly with the "drift everywhere" handling model which kinda bugs me. Either that or there is a distinct difference between "handling" mode and "drifting" mode. Hot Pursuit 2 had the best handling model IMO, it really felt like you were driving on the ragged edge.