Well, I'll be trying the Deamon Tools/Starforce Nightmare method then... as I also had the idea that it might be the crack as such, I hoped someone would have had the same problem and probably found a solution for it...
yes, there is a fix on GCW... without that fix, the game will CTD if you try to enter car setup... with the fix it works fine in single stages/single ralleys, but not in carrer/championship mode...