How to avoid the automated update...

You'll need to create the variables and manually populate the results_formal table, but something like this should do it:

if (variable_get('manual_update_results', 1) == 1) {
  $manual_race_nid = variable_get('manual_race_nid' , 0);
  $manual_previous_race_nid = variable_get('manual_previous_race_nid' , 0);
  if (!$manual_race_nid || !$manual_previous_race_nid) {
    drupal_set_message(t("The manual update failed. Please set the manual update variables first.", 'error');
    return;
  }
  _ff1_update_results_db($manual_race_nid, $manual_previous_race_nid);
}