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There is no on-board cache on this controller.
^ This is your problem: you are trying to use controller which is unsuitable for ESXi. Basically, you are running your disks un-cached, because ESXi (unlike any other modern OS) does *NOT* do disk-caching.
What may be causing this constant HDD seek/thrashing while writing to the RAID 1 array
When you write to raid-1 array, controller must write data-chunk to both drives, then read them back (from both disks), calculate crc and compare it (before going on to next data-chunk). This is trully terrible without cache.
...and is there a way to mitigate it in ESXi 6.0?
Yes, there is one: buy some serious raid-controller, with on-board cache (the bigger&faster the better).
Should I try downgrading the firmware to P19 and also reverting the VMware drivers to P19?
Can I activate or deactivate some VMFS related features?
No, because it does not make any sense.
Can I from ESXi modify the drive cache behavior?
No, and it does not make any sense either. Controller can not use disk-cache for its operatioins. In fact, some raid-controllers even turn the disk-cache (not controller-cache) off, to prevent data-loss in case of power-outage and to avoid double-caching (keeping the same data both in controller-cache and disk-cache)...