I think it might be more than that. A couple of months ago, I was racing someone from Germany, and the game was REALLY laggy. When I left his room, I noticed that his location was set to Korea, for whatever reason. I wrote him a PM telling him about the lag I experienced and asking why his location was set to Korea. He then changed it to EU, I rejoined him, and all the lag was gone completely. So, I don't know, maybe there are some kind of servers behind this?