Game hangs on loading screen

[flibitijibibo]

First, system specs:
Windows 7 Home Premium x64
Core 2 Duo, 2.66GHz
4GB RAM, 667MHz
EVGA 8800GT
Creative X-Fi Elite Pro

The game appears to run fine in every way except for the actual... game, part. I can tweak the settings fine, I can modify the car/character without a problem, and I can access the server menus without a problem. However, whenever I try to start a server it hangs on the loading screen. It doesn't actually crash (or even hang in the way you'd expect), and I can even alt-tab and manipulate the window normally without so much as a slowdown. It just sticks on the loading screen forever. It's hard to tell what's happening, but I can say that while loading the hard drive is doing nothing and the CPU is running at 60%+ usage with no sign of return from the game. To make sure I wasn't being impatient, I gave it 5 minutes to load. Sure enough, nothing.

Any ideas? I may run it in Fedora + Wine later tonight and see if that works.

Edit: Yup, the game runs better on GNU+Linux. I dunno whether to laugh or cry...