Now that's odd, as I have never had an issue like that with Steam. Many, many years ago, when the platform was new, I did. But for the last 4 years of heavy usage of Steam (and I mean heavy usage), it has been spot on every time.
I'm genuinely surprised that so many people seem to have problems with Steam. Maybe it's a localisation thing, but my team and I in the UK love it.
We have raced in steam games since 2008, mainly race07/race on/gtr evo sim wise of course in a number of different leagues in Europe, and there's been many cases of issue's regarding Steam involving drivers and league admins getting the issue's, some very recently also. It's fine most of the time these days but there seems to be something pop up still for some people even now, which obviously can be frustrating for someone right before a league race. There is also reports of problems with steam causing lag in some FPS games recently also which is caused by steam (normally fixed in a steam update, but they are not so rare)