On the map surf_syria on the easy server, if you use the kill command in spawn it can sometimes spawn you into Stage 3. I'm guessing that this could be used to get a faster time because you're skipping Stages 1 and 2.
I'm fairly certain that they fixed the time issue, but I do think spawning at Stage 3 is still a problem.
Unlikely so, however we've been aware of it for a long time - but it isn't possible to get faster times (anymore) with it. It's fairly low on the list of priority though.