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It's not a thing that really shows unless you're up in their face since their turning speed is still fast enough to not give you the opportunity at range, so you won't notice it while running and gunning, but it's very evident once you're point-blank and have enough room to wrap around the NPC. JC still moves slightly faster than enemies can turn to face him, as long as the distance is close enough.
This likely cuts into how stealth in the game works entirely and so it's not a bad thing, but it's just that they didn't really expect you to run up to enemies and do perfect 360s around them. Which is fair enough, I guess? It does take a fair bit of skill to do, enough that I doubt anybody back when the game released could even pull it off. But then again, they speedran Quake back in the 90s.
I got curious enough to experiment with it a little, just now. It seems to be entirely dependent on whether the NPC has fired yet or not. Even if you shoot in-front of them and get spotted a bit ahead, you can still stun them this way by just running up to their face and doing this before they've fired their first shot. They still won't be able to attack until they've perfectly faced you.
And while not being the whole factor, it might also have something to do with enemies having to equip their gun and play the animation for it, because patrolling enemies and whatnot first have to actually select their weapon before being able to fire at you, as far as I've gathered. That's why you hear that inventory sound whenever an enemy gets cautious of something, it's them equipping their gun. That's just speculation from me, though. Either way, at most it just gives you more time to do this tactic.
