I really have to disagree with some opinions on here
If you would like to have AI that would lower in skill when you lose allot of distance you should pick more easy difficulty. Than even when you make some mistakes you can still take first place. seriously if It's really a complaint you should just play on lower difficulties.
The higher the difficuly gets the more perfect you have to be, I don't see why rubberbanding ai is a bad thing when your playing better or on higher difficulties it's a good thing.
Furthermore It's a racing game, that's how racing games work if your distance is to great to reach first place again. If you would play against real life players the same thing would happen unless they makes mistakes or are mediocre players why would the ai need to be easy or flawed.
Besides there are plenty of other games with hard ai however with some genre's there are more ways to comeback, but with regular racing games It's only normal that after some mistakes you cannot take first place over again since there is only so much you can do.
These complaints do not make any sense to me. If you want to win at higher difficulties at such games you just have to play without making mistakes, besides in any normal racing games there is nothing that will interfere while your being in first place so wins can be consistent if your good. if you make a mistake It's your own fault.
Racing games are all about achieving the best laps and knowing the different courses, hardcore race fans strife for perfection, best laps require trial and error and allot of them, It's not for everyone repeating the same thing every time. If this is a complaint I would recommend lowering the difficulty since I actually think it is pretty logical on the higher difficulties for racing games after only few or 1 single mistake.