If my numbers are right, 128mbit upstream could hold 8 racing cars at 3 pps, amount of cars drop by 1 car each step up in pps (4 pps 7 cars, 5 pps 6 cars.. )
Can't see how it would be possible to automatically receive SPx packets without correctly enabling race tracking, thus you should also be getting LAP packets.
Logically, one packet reached the server first, got a final result established first, and thus ended up over the next finisher as times are identical. The fact that one car is a tiny bit ahead of the other in the screenshot doesn't really mean anything since the finishing times are the same. Since position updates covers only a few percent of physics cycles, the fact that one car is slightly ahead can be an ever so slight "mistake" by the prediction engine, whilst not actually affecting the "real" time of finishing.
So, my guess is you finished at the exact same time, and network latency decided the final positions.
Since you're using separate directories, you're using separate binaries (different copy of the .exe-file).
Can't see anything wrong in the setup you've described, it should be working. If you had somehow failed to set separate ports, you should get the "SetupServerSocket: Bind failed"- message.
You can run as many server's you'd like on a single system, if each LFS server required it's very own copy of Windows to run, i'd say it was the worst game server program ever written.
Just change ports and make sure all ports are allowed in any firewalls.
This isn't really an improvement suggestion. NETWORK FATAL: NOTCONN should mean something like a connection has failed since there's no longer any connection (timeout / dropped). I've had this "error" a few times when i've tabbed out while connecting and the connection timed out while LFS wasn't in focus.
Graphics aren't impressive at all, making something look good in high resolution isn't exactly an achievement, GTR2 in low resolution looks worse in a DX9/high mix then a DX8/medium one. 20-30fps everywhere for me in DX8/medium/no rain, no real difference between an empty track and a full grid start. FPS is higher while not driving for some reason (replays). Tried racing in the rain once, but i spun on the grid with 2 fps and didn't really feel like trying again. I've just played thru Dreamfall which has spiffy DX9 graphics, bumpmapped reflective "wet" pavement in the rain etc. running at about 25 fps on my system, so GTR2 definitely does something wrong.
Sound is alright with >20 fps, but to me sounds of surrounding cars are for some reason really awful, very vague and impossible to place in "3d". Physics are okay apart from some kind of lag between my inputs and something actually happening, countersteering works sometimes but it's really hard to get a feel for when the car is going to react. FFB is poor, it does give the feeling that you're somehow connected to the car, but not that the steering wheel is in any way connected to the wheels.
But worst of all, after doing about 4 races and a few hotlap sessions in both cars-- seen and waited for the track to load about 10 times, it's just too annoying to keep playing knowing that lfs would've only loaded the track one single time, not that it takes very long, it's just really badly designed.
Provide more information, "my server" doesn't really say if you're running the server on a local or remote machine, if you're trying to connect locally or thru the master server, etc.