The influence of carrier relaxation on the emission dynamics of a semiconductor microcavity laser is investigated using femtosecond optical excitation. For moderate excitation intensities, the dynamics of the output laser pulse becomes significantly slower when the photon energy of the pump laser is tuned from the quantum well band-gap energy towards higher energies. Theoretical calculations reproduce this trend only if the interaction-induced dephasing of the polarization driven by the pump pulse, the formation, and relaxation of the nonequilibrium carrier distribution as well as the chirp of the excitation pulse are taken into account. Additionally, band-structure effects such as excitation of light holes influence the thermalization dynamics and lead to discontinuities in the general trend. ©1997 American Institute of Physics.