trgz

Sounds very plausible - I'm on a PC but I'm sure they're pretty identical across the platforms. It's raining today so I'll have a gander at the above - more importantly I shall try getting off the bottom of the leaderboard!

Yeah my point exactly - wrong class AND it obviously isn't shown on the end of stage leaderboard for the very same reason - it rather breaks the 'realism'

Ah, that could be it - I'll watch for that, though I always see a car pulling off before me (usually of the wrong class* - grr Codemasters), and the occasional car steaming by the side of the road so I never assumed I was first off. (*so far it's always been a Renault 5 TTurbo even though I'm in the RWD career mode/race)

I've found that after several events, where I was getting red sectors no matter how hard I pushed, that I can drive a stage at 30-60mph and get green sectors all the way (first stage in Poland) what gives?