So I've had this game for about a week now and it's excellent! I think Criterion/DICE did a great job of re-vamping the series and all that jazz, but that's not what I'm here to talk about. I was hoping to get some feedback from other users on their experience with the final area of missions. Namely, am I the only one who has hit a wall this late into the game? Up until now, I had minimal trouble in previous races, earning distinctions and gold medals(Resulting from several restarts,but that's just me) for the majority of races, with the exception of some rapid response/preview objectives.  
   
On an unrelated note, when participating in a "race" event in the racer career section, once other racers have been taken down/wrecked, do they respawn and continue to race? It's something I always look into, but end up being forgetting once the fuzz shows up.

The difficulty does ramp up a lot on the back end of the game, certainly in the racer section. I'm having a lot of trouble getting gold on the later stages, especially the hot pursuit ones and that last event around the whole county is a bitch... For the rapid response races I can only say that these are quite doable if you use most of the shortcuts and don't hit anything :)
 
Also racers will respawn after getting taken down/wrecked