[Michael Butler]

I'm still confused. Registration for any particular race is open basically any time, so long as you don't want to register for a race that will take place sooner than the race in question. Either I'm still not understanding what you are asking for, or you are not understanding how registration and how late you can actually join a server for a race you are registered for (which is basically all the way until the race ends).

The "race" doesn't actually start until ~13 minutes passed the hour currently. You have ~5 minutes of practice crossing the hour, then ~12 minutes of qualifying, then a 1 minute wait for the race to start (these are times for 20 minute timed races... 1 hour races just add 10 more minutes to qualifying).

So basically if you practice enough to get a good outlap and a single hotlap in before the race, you already can join the server 10 minutes after the hour (again, using the Online Server Browser... not the registration page Join button, which is always sketchy anyway for me), assuming the track isn't a 2+ minute laptime.

Am I making any sense?

I'm not sure either but i do know it just "seems" like i barely miss the deadline for registration sometimes by 15 secs but that's my bad and not the clock's fault.