During the race start, users cannot shoot while in the checkpoint in order to prevent race start ruckus. It just so happens that even after the countdown and you get out of your car, you still can't shoot to defend yourself, and race blockers can annihilate you effortlessly unless you're smart enough to press G to get into passenger seat of your vehicle and disqualify yourself. Don't remove the race protection.. but please fix it so that after countdown all people can shoot again.
PS: I was gonna post it in the Dev site but it doesn't seem to be very active, move this to a more convenient board if needed or re-add the old bug report section :p
