Cheaters * everywhere!!!!

That aside, if I think there seems to be a bit of misunderstanding here regarding how Autolog Rival system works. Here is the explanation:

1) Once you top the friends leaderboard, the game will give you a new target in form of time/score (depending on event) of a random Payback player with existing personal best that is slightly better than yours. It is not a world record or anything, just a time/score randomly picked from a pool of times/scores slightly better than yours.

2) When you beat your Autolog Rival, Autolog will assign you a new rival, whose existing result on that track is slightly better than your new personal best. Once again, it is not a world record.

The mechanism is exactly the same as in 1). There are no bots instantly overtaking your new personal best, it simply is matched up against an even better already existing personal best of other Payback player and that will always happen unless you have #1 time/score in the entire world.