Blur crashes on Tokyo Shutoko loading screen under Win XP

Blur crashes on Tokyo Shutoko loading screen under Win XP References So far Blur worked fine for me under Windows XP (SP3 32-bit), I managed to beat first boss and start chapter 2. However, just after trying to race on one of the Tokyo Shutoko tracks (presumably Wangan-sen), the game crashes to desktop just after few seconds of loading screen. I applied some automatic online patches to bring it up to date, tried several different vehicles and various GFX options details, to no avail. I have Core2Duo, GTS 450 and 2 GB of RAM. Just note it is a non-Steam version of the game (retail). Is there any known issue with Tokyo tracks in Blur? Is there any possible fixes to such problems?