I believe I figured out what the problem was. I have an AMD graphics card and so this application called AMD Gaming Evolved comes packaged with the driver updates. It has an in-game overlay, video recording options, etc. I turned this off while I'm playing the game and everything rungs just fine. No crashing, no locking up, nothing. It's somewhat dissappointing that I have to choose between perfectly smooth gameplay and game recording capabilities but nevertheless I'm glad I found out what was causing this. Also, before you ask, yes I tried turning off Origin in-game and just having the AMD Gaming Evolved app running without it, since I figured maybe the two in-game overlays were conflicting somehow, but no that doesn't seem to help. Gaming Evolved must be the bug, so I apologize.
PS. No other racing game has held my attention for this long since Midnight Club LA, keep up the good work.
