I managed to get a low 6 min and get the gold after many attempts. My problem is that I keep using the mini map to try and judge the upcoming corner severity, because it all looks so similar. To progress I need to to turn it off and learn the stage inside out like other rally games, but tbh I think I've done enough I'm happy just to get the gold
And having not played for a while I forgot just how great and fun this game is.
I had the mini map change while I was doing it. When I started, it was super zoomed in and nigh on useless, but at some point it started showing me much more of the track on the mini map. I wondered if it was hurting my performance for it to be more useful, as I was looking at it more, but I think it was helpful once I got the hang of looking the right distance ahead.
I don't know why the mini map changed in this way. I have a mod installed that claims to show more of the track on the mini map, but I was running with mods disabled. I can't see that there's any control you can bind to zoom in/out on the mini map.
How I went about learning it was to note the time on the clock each place where I went flying off the track, so I ended up with a list of times where I knew there was something likely to catch me out. After a while, with the clock alerting me to the pending danger, I started to get used to the visuals for each of those danger spots.
Your low 6 min might not be enough any more, gold was 5:47 when I did it, and having got it, it no longer shows me the time needed for gold so I don't know what it is now. It might be slower on your platform (I'm playing on PC).
Incidentally, are the challenges bugged when more than 10k players have done them? The player count never goes above 10k, so the top 10% needed for gold stays at needing top 1000, no matter how many players have set a time. So you might actually need e.g. top 5% if the real player count is 20k. Or is it intentional that you should always need top 1000 for gold, regardless of how many players have set a time?