There is a function in the game which has a chance to cause scripted crashes to each NPC driver to give the player a better hope of winning (as the game itself cheats by giving the AI cars higher top speed than you). I was passing 5+ cars within the first minute of the race (in-game time) because they had all crashed and became disabled. But then I started noticing that cars were crashing EVERYWHERE. The slightest tap of the stick will send you into a barrier. At this point the vehicle becomes incredibly hard to control and it's basically impossible to race properly. I decided to raise the speedhack to 2, 3, 4 times normal. At half speed its extremely hard to judge if you are going too fast for turns, oversteering, and knowing whether or not you might collide with nearby vehicles.
However in my opinion this actually just makes it difficult in another way. Many people suggest that for those not skilled at driving games, use Cheat Engines speedhack and set it to 0.5, giving you twice as much time to react. They won't actually change how the race behaves and without good driving: you'll still lose. I tried a few tables that are available online that have things such as set lap number, freeze race timer, set race position, etc. Tonight I was messing around with Cheat Engine on the Mission 'Fair Play' on Classic difficulty of Mafia: Definitive Edition.
