If its any consolation you're not the only one stuck on this mission. It might be partly because of your hardware. Try fiddling with your mouse sensitivity, that helped me some (although I still can't make it all the way through the course yet). I have no idea how to modify save games, can't help you there. I've seen many recommend using a light fighter for this mission. My own experience is that a freighter handles about as well as the fighter and the speed for both is the same (which seems weird to me, shouldn't a freighter be slower?). The handling issue for me is probably a result of my hardware. My track ball is very sensitive (which I need for graphics work), but it makes it hard to control my ship in the game as the game is extremely sensitive to any movement. Its odd because I can use the same trackball with games like BattleZone and I do just fine.

I was having the same problem until I found a recommendation to turn down the detail settings. Having too high detail settings causes enough lag in the game to cause a control problem to prevent being able to win the race. Once I fixed that I won first try....

if you get around to the end of the course you should see hovis slow down but then there are weapon platforms which fire cruise distuptors at you

i ate a booger so you ate a turd.