Top notch names lol! Im sorry it didn't seem winnable, sometimes a car can be hindered by its lowest stat, or potentially your car's AI could have been especially stupid in the race. Under the hood, there are 5 races and the fastest car in each race has all their stats equal to 2x the race number (ie australia is 2nd race, so the car to beat has 4s for all its stats). Your car also has a "plot armor" bonus of 5 or 10% so it can beat a an enemy car with identical stats. I think in testing the races were especially challenging if your top speed stat was below that of the fastest car.