Have never encountered anything liek that before... The only trouble I had that the first time I was hitting CTRL+Q or so rather than Shift-W... After reloading, I had no problems at all. I never really encountered any problems with the supposed cheating of Hovis' friends either...

i didnt have my cruise engines shut off (i won the first time) but
i think if u beat him on the first try then he ativates all this wep platforms but just keep flying and u will take minimal damage

stop using goto and use instead shift+w

damn pussies that use the autopilot instead of flying themself like a man should

with my patriot
cruise engines
mouse flight
i hit 2 gates which knocked me out of course seriously but i managed to get back on course quickly and still won
the npc u r racing seems to slow down in every turn
anyway, when i reached the last few gates all those weapon platforms started shooting but they didnt hurt me much

i won from the first time
i dont understand that so many ppl find that race so hard to win

Ensure you are not using the go-to cruise. If you are in go-to, your engines will shut down automatically when you get within about 800 of the waypoint. Other than that, can think of no other reason why engines would shut down on their own.

I don't really understand the problems in the race either, but then I also didn't have the huge problems winning the race in Mafia either... :S