If it ain't broken why fix it...It was pretty ok before the patch...now it's worse...What the...?!? Are you crazy!?! It was riddled with bugs like a swiss cheese is with holes, and now its very very much better!
I tried to recreate your problem. The only way I could do that, was by activating the 7th gear, and then reverting to the default setups, before I started the race.
Then the 7th gear disappeared. But otherwise I was able to drive with it @ Montreal, both in free practice, and for 22 laps in a non-championship race. Its there, and you can have it if you want to.
Regarding the setups not loading properly. According to other reports setups, made in v1.0, load just fine in the v9.6 patched game with no changes
whatsoever to any values. I dunno about v4.0 patched to v9.6. But that doesn't matter anyway, since the readme clearly states that V9.6 is not compatible with v4.0.
I take it that either you are doing something very wrong
in game, or that you didn't apply the patch properly.
Check the credits list (workshop ---> credits). If it doesn't say v1.02, then you installed the patch the wrong way.
Be aware that copying the patch files, or extracting them to you GP4 folder isn't the right way to install the patch, and that this method DOES create problems! You have to extract the patch to a temporary folder, and then run SETUP.EXE from that folder.
It's only after we've lost everything, that we are free to do anything.