Solved

delayed race start

Hi Gert, we know a lot more about it than Justin figured (he's new, give him a while to get in to things!). It is as you alluded to, due to load at peak times. I'm glad to hear you had a good experience yesterday, that is what we'd expect from the changes that were made. It should be even better tonight, because yesterday the pruning of inactives was only partially complete and still ongoing. Today they're all gone.

There was a large amount of inactive leagues and teams in the system, from mobile players who install/uninstall apps like it's going out of fashion (happens to all apps). Our pruning of this type of inactivity was not as aggressive as it could have been (non-existent in Pro and Elite) to try and please league hosts and keep their leagues populated, but it was putting too much strain on our service to provide resources to these inactive players. Pruning this inactivity in Pro and Elite was the easily available low-hanging-fruit that could provide immediate/overnight improvements to the service. That's our short-term solution, and it has also bought us time to work on the long-term solutions for growth, and begin implementing upgrades to the system, without having to rush it through.