Same race, same strategy, one season later...

Putting this down as a bug because I have no idea what could have happened here.
Please compare the following two races:

Season 3, Race 12, in Pro tier
http://igpmanager.com/play/?url=race-result/19823/18432
Season 4, Race 12, in Elite tier
http://igpmanager.com/play/?url=race-result/29820/18432

There's an incredible difference in speed between the two races. So last season I won the race in 0h 41:26.080, this season - with the exact same strategy - I finished in 0h 42:19.xx - I'm aware there are a lot of circumstances that can cause this, but I have no idea which could cause this massive difference. Especially because:
1) The design levels of my car parts are higher than last season
2) My driver's skill has increased substantially
3) I had 100% brand new car parts for this year's race
4) I attended neither of the races, so it was full pull both times
5) The strategy was exactly the same

Looking at the winning time, the race was a couple of seconds slower than last year's race, but not almost a minute..?

I guess the weather was different than last year?

looking at the quali times it looks like it was raining in elite during qualifying, and you being all the way down in 25th means your gonna be stuck traffic alot reducing your lap times

Hmmm.. yeah.. didn't notice the rain in qual and the first laps! Guess that might have been the issue here. Sorry!