The name “recording” may be a bit misleading, but they’re meant to represent anything having an identical sound; my rule of thumb is that if you can listen to the two and identify any difference between them beyond fidelity, then they’re certainly separate recordings (not being able to do so isn’t proof that they’re the same, but that’s not the case here). In this case, the second should probably have an “edit of” relationship to the first, but it’s definitely a separate recording.
And completely off-topic, but does anyone know why those introductions are put on the end of the preceeding track? It feels wrong to me, and “because the listeners want to hear the song immediately” is more just a reason to buy the studio album instead.
Just a guess but are those intros in a CD pregap? If so, appending to the previous track is just the convention for whatever reason. You can change that in e.g. EAC’s rip settings.
Alternatively the CD may just have been poorly mastered or as you say maybe they had in mind to make the song start immediately when seeking.
I actually like it when the MC parts are put at the end of tracks so the start of each song is indexed on the CD (and multiple indexes in CD tracks are no longer in use nowadays).
MC parts are not always only intros, they are in between, they can be outros or even not related to songs.