I doubt wheels do change anything, coz all data about cars grip are in 'handling.cfg' and 'surface.dat'.
Hydraulics can decrease acceleration.
For example:
-car without hydraulics just accelerate.
-car with hydraulics must 'rise' a bit before it accelerate, that makes you lose like 0.2 to 0.5 second in acceleration.
Powerslide + nitro?
Nitro is in-game script that increase acceleration a bit. Nitro also, in my opinion, makes a lot worse grip. That can feel like 'drift' but for drift would use some RWD cars with big power. (Sabre, Super GT, Bullet, Banshee, Cheetah, Hotring etc...)