I figured it was a long shot, again assuming that your call the begin method which starts up the fast timer.
Probably one of the main Arduino developers will need to debug this.
But so far, I have not found an easy way to debug what is happening on the Uart data between ESP32 and the main processor.
Will ask more about that on a thread more specific on suggestions on how best to connect logic analyzer to some of the test points on the board.