Weird Issue with ELS 7 & 8

Hello everybody,

Upon returning from a long hiatus on GTA 4 (Probably because of GTA 5 :P) there seems to be lots of new and exciting features in the LCPDFR and ELS departments. LCPDFR works great apart from the occasional crashes, yet ELS is doing some funky stuff.

Whenever I press "J" or "L" or any other button related to ELS, my game freezes for about 30 seconds. It then unfreezes and whatever I pressed activates like there was never a problem. Needless to say, this makes the game unplayable!

I have tried:

Different Cars - all the same issue

Spawning the cars without LCPDFR running - same issue
Remapping keys - no avail

I never recalled having these issues in the previous versions (can't even remember which one I last used). I'm at a loss as to what it could possibly be.

The only workaround I've managed to find is to enter Express Mode, then pressing "G" makes everything work fine. However, being the pedantic perfectionist that I am, I want to have everything work properly!

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. 

Thanks,
Schnozzy