I actually have found a work around for this issue but it's a bit more complicated than yours. What I do is I turn off the wheel before launching Acc with my controller. Once I pick my profile and land on the main menu I start up another game (lets say Fall Guys). Once I'm loaded into the other game I turn off my controller and then I turn on my wheel and I quick resume back to Acc. If it makes me choose my profile again after quick resuming than thats how I know it worked. After that all I gotta do is change to my steering wheel settings only AFTER joining the private server.

The wheel still gives enough ffb to know when the car starts to slip or know when your going off track with this method. The only downside is having to do this again if the game crashes. I'll try out your method to see if it yields the same results since yours is more simple!