Since I managed to get my Unicorn Base time (1:40) under its elimination time (1:45) I decided to see what would happen if I finished an Elimination race early. It turns out it ends immediately when you cross the finish line.

My Grindhouse time is also close (1:48), so I got in sight of the finish line. It does spawn, which suggests it works on courses with normal laps too.

Although I wasn't able to finish any others, the time trial times aren't far off. If whitehouse's skips work on legit versions of the game, then 3 are already reached & 5 are within 5s (only Tropico is out of range), it would only require a small improvement + slipstreaming behind the other racers.

Although this gets rid of the previous justification of excluding Elimination races (they always last the same amount of time) I still think they should be skipped because no precise timer is given when the map finishes, so we would have to count frames to determine the correct IGT.