A real 1541 can handle this situation without any problems: The DOS 2.6 finds that the head is initially one track below the desired track and corects it. Then all goes on just as if the disk has been formatted normally.
Which probably should be the reason why the image works just fine in any emulator once it is attached. The emulators all "run" the CBM DOS in the emulated drive, so if this is a regular DOS function, the DOS takes care of the situation. The UI dialogs don't parse the image using an emulated DOS, they simply expect the image to look properly.