Recovery = 15 seconds, tyre change = 1 min 30 seconds. If you puncture the tyre or leave the track, you have to recover your car.
Before it or after it - depends on the length & difficulty of the track. To achieve this result I usually freeze time at the start, then release it approximately when 1st split time appears. And game saves progress if you have 1 minute or less left in split time at the end of stage. Game won't save if you are too fast (as it thinks). well, had to race several times to solve the issue. Money cheat works fine, game doesn't care if you have 1 or 99 mln credits. The Game is smart! But not too much, as I found out. Guys, had the same problem with trainer 1.01 used it with v.0.9 & v.1.01 of the game running on Windows 10 圆4.