How to pause the game?

The game is fine for me, everything is great...except that I can't really pause the game!
I am an old gamer and I know that you can't pause an online game really, but at least you just need a menu to return to to exit/restart race/event (yes that's my right as in any racing game), change game settings, exit the game to return to main menu, etc...
but this? I am stuck on the streets...if I want to return to main menu I have to exit the game through alt+F4 then restart it completely! or I would just turn off the wifi network to force the game to return to main menu! what the hell is this?
even the pause/brk button is not working....also tried to access the phone feature in the game it only gives me 2 opts, either go to garage or snapshot...I even want to know how to play offline, I don't like sharing and would like to play alone, I am interested more in the story itself and the personal challenges...the play alone feature is not on the game settings as I can see on the net around....maybe at this point I can pause like any other normal game?!
I am seriously angry of this!