Currently workshop playermodels only download when you’re sitting at the starting line with 2-3 seconds before the race starts. If you haven’t downloaded everyone’s model in this 2-3 seconds you’ll get a stutter while racing which could cause you to crash or simply lose time against an opponent. This will get more impactful once workshop vehicles are added and you’re downloading two workshop files for each player, for up to a possible 18 downloads in 3 seconds.
My suggestion would be to load workshop playermodels as soon as you load into the server and as soon as people join the server, while you’re sitting in the “ready up” phase.
Vehicle workshop models could then be downloaded when each player hits “ok” on the customise phase.
(No change to what happens if someone joins late - you’ll get their models downloaded when they join)