Just because you change your status to 'Appear Offline' doesn't mean it suspends all activity to the net, you should just play it safe and close programs you cannot use whilst racing.

MSN only lags certain people though, its not THAT bad but like i said, for some it is, especially when their game temp freezes, when someone messages them, as for XFIRE, thats MADE for running in the background of a game, i just don't run it when im playing a bit more seriously, because i have like 400 friends on it, and there is always some crazy german, asking 'ARE YOU REALLY GAY? KEKEKE'

AntiViruses, are probobly the WORST things to run in the background, McAffee, Norton, they are BIG memory users, and Norton especially never ****s off when you tell it, its a waste of time, you may as well type 'i am a gay' in the CMD window and you would eliminate more viruses!