a little more information on how this works for you guys. When you first start playing you will create a character and go through a sequence where you come in on a plane and meet Lamar. You will then be put into a race. If when loading the race you don't almost immediatly see details such as a list of other players in the game (when I did it it was just me and Lamar so there may not be any other people but you will see your name and Lamars) then you need to dashboard out and try again. It took me and several others quite a few tries before it went through. After the race there should be far fewer problems in the future. This was on Xbox.
Also, it will automatically try to match you up with other crew members. Normal people are white dots on the map while other crew members will have a blue circle around the white dot to make them easy to spot.