then you've spent $7 and two buys for what is essentially a Peddler with +1VP, which is not that impressive
I guess that's why you falsely think that Chariot Race is weak. A Peddler with +1VP, what Chariot Race does when it triggers, is incredibly good, so good that it could not exist as a card at any price.
I guess a potential comparison is Village+Smithy netting 2 cards vs. Chariot Race and Secret Passage netting a Coin and a VP. While draw is simply always good and situationally often better than the Coin and the VP (so overall it is simply hard to compare) the potential to gain VP tokens without any risk and without clogging your deck (like with Groundskeeper so a Groundskeeper engine arguably needs draw support so you basically add draw power to your engine in order to be able to gain VP tokens so we I could argue slightly polemically that drawing is here subservient to the VP token gaining and make the case for Secret Passge plus Chariot Race over Village plus Smithy) is certainly not weak in any way.