Sorry, this is probably somewhere but I couldn't find it: Is the race counted as a DNF if you leave before qualy ends in ranked?
As an addition to this discussion, it is not a good idea to quit between the qualifying session finishing & moving to race & going to the grid. Last night I qualified for a race in 2nd position, the session moved to race but I realised I did not have the time to complete the race so quit out before joining the grid. Not a good idea. I lost 57 ranking points & an incredible 9 reputation points! My reputation, which has been above 90 for several months has dropped to 83 with this one action!
To clarify, you won´t get any penalty for quitting before the qualifying session ends. If you quit after the proceed to next session sign is displayed then it counts as a race quit so you will lose points then.
Happened to me also (-: . It's better not to wait to the end of the qualy session. Maybe 1/2 minutes before the end, to be safe.
Believe it or not, disqualification is better for your rep than quitting. I was disqualified for the first time in 100 races due to getting rammed multiple times and was surprised how few points I lost. On the other hand when I was forced to quit out of two races, I lost 15 points and ended up below 80.