@Sim-plicity-Dev So, try as I might I've been unable to reproduce the problem the last 2 days. Thank you for explaining the technical details, that stuff is always interesting.
I'll get the screenshots whenever I encounter the issue again, but I can answer the question; yes, the wheel remains bumping into the endstop until I switch USB mode from game to sim and/or back. Exiting the game doesn't help. I am using an external, powered USB hub to connect the devices on my rig to the PC.
@Ochso I have also found that sim mode works just as good as game mode, but in the interest of clarity I'm only using game mode as per the instructions.