Sadly i can't provide the requested information as of now. It definitely happened to me in a multitude of all kinds of different scenarios.
just Today
- AI Difficulty Setting: 90
- Stage: Sweden : Vargasen
- If Career, then which career event it is: Quick Play
- Time of Day: Day
- Weather Condition: Dry
- Vehicle Class: WRC 2
Class Leader AI, i believe was off at like 7:30~40, i did a 4:59 or something like that. Did a timetrial after to confirm, it was not that great.
Some thought from being a Developer myself:
Once driving in Finnland, i noticed the Tracker on the Progress Bar of the "Class Leader" Stopped for a while a few times, like he had a crash/reset, which made my current working theory, that all times might be coupled to the class leader with an offset, and there might be simulated misstakes/crashes. This would explain quite alot of things, then if there is a misstake all of a sudden all AI drivers loose all that time and then some. It would be an easy way to implement this with a nice Idea, but a big oversight.
I would Actually Appreciate there being a bit of inconsistencies within the whole Stage participation (1 of 30 ai drivers might well have a 30 sec - 3 min Crash or a DNF every once in a while, this would definitely increase immersion, as it happens in real rally quite a lot, especially on rallys like greece or Kenya it's a bit unimmersive if the whole field only has a spread of 20 seconds...)