[Russell Sobie]

I'm not the slowest on the track usually... but I'm only the fastest when our more talented drivers are sound asleep on the other side of the planet. So when I do happen to be in a race where someone has a good 5+ seconds better lap times than I do, I usually make it a point to watch their replay to see where I can start shaving some time off my racing line, or braking zones, or whatever.
What I have noticed a few times is that some drivers SEEM to be able to down shift at much higher revs than I can due to the downshift protection functionality of some cars. Most notibly right now is the Audi TT Cup. It seems like downshifting sooner would squeek some milliseconds off of my braking time on tight corners, but whenever I try to do this I find myself butting up against this protection and subsequently LOSING time since my brain is now wondering why pressing my paddle did nothing but make a beeping sound and now I'm still going faster into this corner than I want to.
I know you can remove the downshift protection NOTIFICATION in the View options in AC, but I'm wondering if there's a way to remove it from the car itself.
Is this possible to do? Am I just seeing super-expert downshifting right at the right time by these faster drivers, or are they doing something I'm not aware of?
I've googled this and all I see is a bunch of smug sim nerds talking down to other folks like myself that are just frustrated with the beeping and seeming lack of controller input. And no answers.