Fixed.

It's worse on hard. You just got to remain calm and try again and again until you memorize the track. I do hate it when something that should scrape your car send you flying instead. Slow down at corners.

Ah that's when the insane back-markers slam into the side of your car and send you flipping off the track?

At first I had problems beating the silver levels, especially the first, but I got over it by learning to use the brake more efficiently using a Speeddevil, I did try many times though

I just got the game and have been playing it for the last few hours. I was thoroughly enjoying the game until I reached the aforementioned silver levels! The difficulty bar has risen somewhat to the point where a random twitch or an unfortunate slide into a tire wall and you're back in 8th wondering where the fun went! I think I also opted for the Speed Devil, or whatever the most expensive Silver level car is. It handles brilliantly on tarmac and the bonus oval, but is a bitch to use otherwise.
The game basically becomes a rally game by the silver stages as far as I can see whereupon you need to slide and corner gracefully throughout, only there's 7 other cars wanting to ruin your day by sending you into a concrete barrier. In the earlier stages it feels more like proper racing with some bumper car action thrown in. I dread to think what the Gold races are like!

The gold races are the worse. I got about 4 more to to yet I'm stuck. I have not played it since October. I recommend you don't go with the fastest car. Chose something with weight as there are plenty of times were you have to brake around corners or slow down in gold. Don't rely on boost ether as that can crash you often.

As I mentioned before, try using the Fasthammer. It's a heavier car, so it has better grip (and it's easier to control too), and its engine is powerful enough for you to have decent acceleration and also reach a good speed.

I think the key for victory lies in the first seconds of the race. If you can shake off the seven cheaters (oh yes, blatant cheaters...) after the first curve, you will be able to go on without minding the 'sticky battering-ram tactics' so dear to them, and concentrate on the trail.
Personnally, I'm not much into racing games, of which Flatout is the sole manifestation in my game collection. Nevertheless, I've just beaten the (nightmarish) Finchley Challenge, and have now beaten all of the 36 races, therefore, if a newbie like me did it, it should be feasable for anybody :)

I tried Flatout again today after being a bit frustrated with the game. First I plugged in my old PS2 controller which made controlling the car so much better than relying on keys. After a few races I traded in my Speedevil with the heavy slower car and immediately felt a difference in steering. Gone were the fast slides into corners, but in came more control. I struggled a lot but managed to get at least 3rd place in all the silver races. Upon gaining the Gold races, I immediately bought the Bonecrusher car. A couple of minor upgrades and suddenly I was winning the gold races without much fuss. For some reason, I'm finding the AI struggle like hell with the Gold tier cars. I found them crashing all the time. I'd win some races by almost half a lap. That said they are getting harder, although I still find lack of track knowledge sends me flying and costs me places as opposed to the AI being faster and harder.
One thing I've noticed since driving the really heavy cars is impacts tend to have more force so you eject from the car much more often, or so it seems. It really is silly.
Btw, one of the Gold tier cars is always black during races, the texture just disappears. How odd. Anyone else have that issue?

The blacked out car happens to me in all cups. I think it is some lightening glitch as the textures will come back if you are right next to it. You may have had it easy but it was tough for me. Maybe a controller would help greatly. Anyway, I managed to beat the game completely and I will not be playing it in a long long long time.

Same thing happened here. It's even odder than that - if you get really, really close to it, from a certain angle, the textures will appear. It seems to be some problem with the lighting routine.

Whenever I'm losing a race, I take my time and try to figure out some of the shortcuts in the track.

All tracks so far had at least 2 good shortcuts.

Most shortcuts take at least 2-3 attempts to get right, but they are worth it as they give you an edge over the CPU who never uses the shortcuts. Often, the main part is to figure out how much off track the game lets you go when using the shortcut before it takes you off the race and requires you to reset (and btw, check your position when the game asks you to reset, sometimes it will ask you to reset, but won't take you off the race in which case you are ok as long as you don't get a major accident that require you to reset).

Another place where you can easily outsmart the CPU is in the physical aspect of the game (when cars collide). The CPU will go for the easy dirty moves, but if you get a good feel for what works with collisions (and how to recover from them gracefully), you'll come out on top more often then not when things get physical.

I absolutely love this game. The most difficult tracks need some learning before. As for the opponents - when you can't outrun them, bash them!
I also prefer heavier cars with good grip, but the other cars are also fun to play with. SpeedDevil is for the ones who likes to jump on the walls, very difficult to handle.

I'll second all the comments about making sure you have the heaviest car (rather than fastest), learning each track and its turns by heart so you can get a clean run, and getting the one or two shortcuts in each track (although some of the 'shortcuts', like the run through the two shacks at the end of some of the ice races, as well as the slope up between the piers and some of the pier jumps also on the ice races, are too tricky/hazardous to bother with).

The most important thing is definitely to get to the front early; at a certain point you just can't catch the frontrunners after a while. The easiest way to start the race at the front is simple: let all the cars get a slight headstart on you, so that when y'all come to the first corner you're one to three car-lengths behind everyone. If you do this you can watch as they all crash into each-other or the scenery, and you have the space to take a full-speed, clean turn on the inside of the first corner. In most cases you'll come-out no worse than third place, but usually in first or second. If you know the track you can easily win from there-on.

I started doing this when I got to the gold cup, and all my races there are first-place wins. By comparison, mucking it with the pack made me really struggle; most of my silver cup races were won in third place.

I started playing this game again and remembered why I stopped in the first place back when it was released: Silver cup.

The bronze races are an absolute blast and plenty of fun. Then you hit the silver races and it becomes a completely frustrating experience that makes you want to toss your controller across the room. The other cars are much faster than you, so you're forced to take every shortcut available. The shortcuts are unforgiving though. You'll race a near perfect 4/5 laps, and then on the last one your front tire will catch "something" at some point and send you flying, or spin around, or stuck on something and it's all over. You'll watch 7 cars fly by you by the time you can reset and get rolling again. Total BS.