Okay, David replied to me - here's what happened:

David "bought" his copy of Wipeout 3 from a slightly dodgy source, i.e. - the game was a copy. The inlay card for the case was just a photocopy of a case that happend to be the PAL release.

Hence, David assumed he was playing with the PAL version of the game, however, having brought the whole thing to his attention he's realised he must be playing with an NTSC version.

Hopefully David will be able to transfer his times across pretty swiftly and that should sort this one out