I've been having this problem since the Norschleife patch. I'm on an MP session when suddenly the game freezes for a few seconds, usually about 3 or 4 seconds during which time I can see the HD light's "working furiously". Then when I'm back, I'm still in the same track position and state, so it doesn't actually cause a crash, while the others have advanced those 3-4 secs obviously. This usually happens in the Norschleife but it has also happened in the Nurburgring Grand Prix as well, as far as I can remember it hasn't happened on other tracks. It doesn't necessarily happen early in the race when there are many cars on track. Due to the HD work and the timing of the problem, I suspect this is happening when R3E is saving part of the replay, also supporting this hypothesis, on some occasions I notice that someone leaves the server right after this happens.
hm, maybe you can try to add the Launch-Option "-disableReplay" to the game just to check if the replay is really causing your issues. Link how to set Launch Options in Steam: https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=1040-JWMT-2947&l=english
As suggested, I've disabled the recording of replays over the last few days and the freeze is definitely gone. Also, I used to have some slight stuttering on occasions which disappeared, everything is much smoother now. Next step will be to re-enable replays and reduce background processes to see if it helps.
hmmm... Was this "quietly" fixed in today's patch? I just did a 40 min race at the Nordschleiffe and no problems at all! There were slight stutters later in the race but it didn't cause any freeze.
Oddly tonight racing at Spa Online in a 20 min race this happened a few times throughout the race. It would freeze 4 to 5 times a lap for about 8/10ths of a second each time, and then I would carry on as if nothing had happened, each time this happened my G27 felt heavy to the left, but didn't rotate. But then I would carry on with the car(s) in front of me, but slightly futher away. It makes for a nice racing excuse lol, but tomorrow I will run some tests with my phone line, and with the replay turned off (cheers for the tip).
I spoke too soon it seems. Yesterday I had a 4 sec freeze on a 40 min race. An interesting thing that might explain why the previous race didn't have the problem is that the replay only saved the 8 cars that finished the race, while yesterday's race replay, which froze, did save all the cars. Another thing that was different was the in the previous race that didn't have a freeze I had quit some background processes and yesterday I didn't. I will try quitting apps again and see how it goes...
That seems like a different problem than mine, first of all it doesn't affect the wheel and FFB and it also happens later in the race, usually on the 2nd or 3rd lap at the Nordschleiffe. I suspect the replay data gets temporarily saved in memory until it reaches a certain size, then it's temporarily saved on the HD, that's when it freezes. So if there are many cars in the race and they stay on the race, it will save data on the 2nd lap, if there's fewer cars it might happen on lap 3. Still it's a good idea to try disabling the replays, I've found out everything is much smoother with them off and so they could be causing your problem somehow. It's also possible you had some background process doing some operation during that race.
Another update on this case, I've tracked the source of the problem to the anti-virus software, disabling it fixed the problem for me. Clearly it was interfering with the temporary saving of the replay and with the system on the limit it just froze.