I have spent numerous hours in this game, and it's good, really good. damn good, probably the best public recreation we have, and it has a really good ui. a few suggestions though.
for starters, and probably one of the easiest changes to implement of my suggestions (just based on coding knowledge), only play the whinny once. the default one can be spaced out the same amount of time you have it spaced out for, but for the love of god only play the whinny once.
another good touch would be maybe to have an extra text box on the side for the three letter abbreviation to have displayed before the race. a key bind to reset the countdown would also be really funny to have, and accurate at least to the tournament. That being said, these are much more difficult to implement, so I'd understand not wanting to do that.
despite all I've said, I really, really enjoy this recreation, and hope to see more on it and more improvements from it, regardless on what you do or don't do with it.