Yeah, lagging behind and let everyone else empty their mags is a good tactic. I try to go for the kills afterwards. Depending on the race difficulty, you get up to six laps to destroy everyone else. That gives you the prize money for the race + a bonus from your “sponsor”, the grim reaper 🙂
I also noticed, that the AI drives differently based on how you drive. In one race I was trying to stay behind to only pick up the wrenches because I was out of money and had a badly damaged car. But the opponents never got very far ahead despite me driving deliberately slow.
But when you race for 1st place, they suddenly are very strong o_O
