Hello,
FreeMASTER does not block - with serial line it uses either polling or interrupt-driven mechanism as configured in freemaster_cfg.h.
The crash should not be related to FreeMASTER. Perhaps only ifs project is set up to read a memory/variable on an undefined address etc. You can try to reduce the FreeMASTER project to a bare minimum with a start/stop variable only in the Watch View and with the HTML control page removed.
What kind of crash is it (hardfault?). Can you track the origin of the fault?
Do you use the NXP motor control demo or your own solution?
Regards,
Michal