Does anyone know if they fixed the free roam multiplayer?

For a game called The Crew where they have a trophy/achievement meant for hanging with friends, you would think there wouldn't be a issue. But the day before the update (and many times before), I was playing with friends when we could barely play together on free roam and the only way for us to play together was to play grand race.

When we tried to race on a closed track with just us, the race took long to load and it would disband us into our own separate races before the race would start.

Does anybody know if the game that calls itself THE CREW fixed the feature where we can actually be a crew?

TL;DR Did they fix the ability to play with friends in free roam with the new update?