Pit stall confusion

[Hardrockracer]

Tweaking a F2 mod I found a couple of strange things I can't quite figure out. The .rfm file notes a maximum number of opponents of 27. However if I count the actual cars in the car set there are a total of 33 cars. What happens with the rest of the cars in the sessions? Does that mean some cars are simply omited? Or does that mean 27 cars can qualify for the race and the others will be left out based upon their qualifying times. Mind you I am talking offline races against the AI.

The other thing is about the pit groups. The .rfm file states 17 (#1 to 17) pit groups with 2 vehicles sharing a pit. That would make 34 cars (33 max. plus the driver's car) as a total max. I went through every .veh file of the carset. Neither do the pit group numbers match nor does the number of vehicles per pit.

There are 11 pit groups oddly numbered 01, 1, 2, 3, 9, 10, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 20. There are 2 pit groups that have 3 cars each assigned to them and 5 pit groups that have 4 cars each assigned to them. To me that sound like an information clash. What happens if the pits are not assigned properly? Does the mod crash? I am pretty sure if that would have been a cause for a crash the makers would have fixed it. Still it seems strange.

Having said that, where in the track data can I see the maximum pit stalls of a certain track. I suppose that is a factor too.