Motorsports Picture, post processing and shutter speed

Hi all, I have a canon 30d- this shot was taken with a Canon EF 100-300mm f:4.5-5.6

I believe I may have had the shutter speed a little high as I needed to put the ISO up to 1600 and have a wide open aperture. Anyway, can someone throw me some critique on the image itself and the post processing? I think I may have went a little far with the color curve, making it look a little fake and washing out the whites.


Before:

I think the colour did go overboard, but some people like that kind of shot, but its given away by the black bit to the left of headlight, that bit just does not look right to me.

If you want to freeze the car it looks like you got pretty close, the only blur I can see is on the wheels, and its not severe so you must be pretty close, in fact i think it would work better with some more blur on the wheels.

hmmm, the color is a bit overboard for my liking, seems to me you might need a faster lens to take the photos. if you are using f/4.5 and fast shutter speed and high ISO, all i can say is that the time of day in which the photos are taken need to be earlier or some faster glass is a must

cheers

1/400 is a bit fast for good wheel blur, but it's not a terrible shot, except for your oversaturation IMO.

I might darken the background to make the car look brighter by comparison.
You can level out the exposure using a selection & a Layer Mask. PS, see post #9; PS Elements in Post # 14
A question about sky and the Airport runway shoot link in my post.

Using an Adjustment Layer which has a mask built in - Post #9:
Airport runway shoot

Selecting areas in PS.

Thanks for the input- I feel like I may need to pick up a 200mm lens, but we will see!

I did some more post processing stuff using advice found on here and elsewhere on the internet....Starting to get the hint that less is more sometimes

Before: