Well, you may have the minimum hardware requirements, therefore PS should not crash in general. Provided you are using also current drivers. Still, this statement is a bit too unspecific, so please tell us more about your hardware (using e.g. CPU-Z and GPU-Z, or HWiNFO32) and your graphic driver version.
When you chose a race, a model should be loaded into the game and presented on the podium. If that provokes a crash, then either the model data is corrupt on your PC, or you have set up some not recommendable graphical options. First try to set up multiple-choice options to "Medium" (Background loader to "Models" or "Off") and disable most of the checkbox options (except Loader Cache). And delete the file "shadercache" in "%APPDATA%\PlaneShift" (enter that in your Explorer address line or in the Run dialog).