I've managed to sail through easy and medium modes in Moto Racer 2 without too much of a problem. Just stuck it on hard and not only it is hard, it is fucking nigh-on impossible. Even driving more or less a perfect lap, I can't get anything above 23rd place, and that's with compromising my lap time by blocking the guy behind me.

Am I missing something or is hard mode bugged?

Switch number of opponents from 24 to 12 (with a lot of enemies the game is a lot harder).

Yeah this game becomes impossible on hard with 24 opponents after a certain point. I mean, I'm sure it's doable, it just becomes so unforgiving it stops being fun.

I gave up 24 opponents on Great Fall, the first map from the Dual Sport or whatever the third Championship is called, where you have MotoX and Street maps combined. I raced as perfectly as possible and I could barely overake #1 after 1 and a half lap, let alone keep the lead for another 1 and a half lap. After more than an hour of failed attempts, I switched to 12 and I beat it with 1st place on my 3rd try.

If you're dumb like me and find it hard to swallow your gamer pride not playing on the absolute 100% hardest mode... I already beat all these 24 dingwads on both modes separately, so it kind of makes sense that I'd only be up against half of them in the "next round", that's how I rationalized it. Honestly, I don't think I'll be going back to 24, it's just too relentless. For me, the fun stops when I feel like I'm playing some weird meta-game to win instead of just playing the game.