Here is a video of a bug I just ran into for online races. When the Quali switched to race mode I was sent to the screen shown in the video. Holding down the ESC key did nothing.
Looks like maybe they had non ready delay on ? In multiplayer players may experience Disqualifications. To avoid this issue please ensure the dedicated server has “Flag Rules” set to OFF and “non ready pitlane start delay” to 0 (OFF).
Nope, that's a different issue, like the game is locked in this blurry screen state and you can't do anything but still hear the other cars etc. It happens very rarely, I've seen it twice over the course of more than a year, some others had it too. So it's in the bug db, gonna have to wait and see if they can do sth about it.