The Forza Journey Update

Slowly working my way through the career. Gaining skills, and learning about how to make your car work better.

If you aren’t into my dissembling about gaming, and Forza in particular. I won’t be disappointed if you skip this post.

Today in Forza

I am working my way through career mode, and currently am in the Classic Sportscar series. My choice here was easy, a Nissan Fairlady Z (essentially a 2.4l RWD sportscar) and as this is like 10 series in, I have some notes.

Each series is a set of 5 or 6 races. Each has a theme. Pony Cars, Hot Hatches, Touring Cars, etc. To qualify for a series, you have to complete the prior series. So it is a progression.

At the start of a ‘Series’ you get an inspirational video that talks about the genre and the cars. Then you get to choose your car. There are usually 6 or so choices. Some start with slightly better PI¹ ratings, but in short they are all stock, and they all pretty much suck. At least the street cars do.

Low on power, crappy tires designed to go 30K miles not perform on a track, weak brakes, suspension that is spongey at best. You don’t need to be a car person to realize that this makes for an interesting experience on a track.

But as you spend time behind the wheel, you earn Car Experience Points (CXP) and unlock upgrades as you level up the car, you can begin to forge it into a race car. By the time you get to level 15 or so, you have enough CXP to make it a pretty decent driving race car.

When you start a series, and buy a car for it, you have 300 CXP. If you are smart, the best investment for a street car is to spend the 300 points on sport brakes. They are all available (that I have seen) within that budget. And it makes the car far better performing².

After that, I use the automatic upgrades. They seem to do a balanced tiering of upgrades to get a better performing car. Certainly better than I can do.

But this gets to a slight problem, that around the 5th race you have enough points for race tires. That is a huge upgrade. Not only better performance, but it opens you to the ability to choose the tire compound (Soft, Medium, Hard) to balance grip/endurance, and Wet for rain races. But then you have to “fit” them within the class limits that the series imposes. So some upgrades will need to be unwound to meet the goals.

But it is worth it.

Pony Car Showcase

I do need to mention this series. It offered a choice of late 60’s muscle cars, and naturally I chose the Ford Mustang 302 Boss. Now, if you have never driven a car like this from this era, it is an experience.

How?

Well, they were packed with a big V8 (the 302 Boss is a 302 cubic inch displacement engine that is 5 liters in metric displacement,) a 4 speed manual transmissions, and often things like limited slip differential to help you put that power to the tarmac³.

Going around corners? Uh, not so much.

So, I spent all my points to get that damn car to stop, turn, and go fast anywhere not in a straight line.

Throughout the races in the series, I was battling with this bot driver in a Camaro. This fucker would brake check me, punt me off the track, and just be an asshole. This came to a head in the second to the last race, on Laguna Seca Short track.

5 lap race and on the 2nd lap, this asshole in the Camaro spun me out then proceeded to push me off the track.

This moved me from 8th place to 21st (out of 24) and I was pissed. I turned on pissed-off teenager mode and hunted this fucker down⁴. On the 5th and final lap I caught up to him, and proceeded to ram him off the course, to let him pass again and ram him off again. I ended up finishing dead last. I scored a single point towards the series trophy.

The next race I want on to win, and close out the series. My trophy? Silver. How many points away from gold?

One.

Had I finished 23 (or 22nd) I would have earned enough points to take home the gold trophy.

Lesson learnt? Don’t drive angry. Truth is, I knew that, but sometimes you just can’t let it go.

1. PI = Performance Index. It is an artificial measure of performance calculated from the physical characteristics of the car and any modifications. A slow car, say a 60’s vintage Citreon (that had like 40 HP) would have a very low PI, and a supercar like the Ferrari F40 would have a high one. Also there are classes, starting at E for the lowest up to A for street(ish) cars, and then Special classes for race cars (S, R, X)

2. I didn’t make this up. A long time ago, I was curious about getting into motorsports, and one of the classic starting points are the SCCA Mazda Miata classes. Ubiquitous, inexpensive to get into, and cheap to keep on the track, a person can get into real racing for less than $10K easily. The guides I read said that when beginning, don’t spend money on engine updates, tires, or other goodies, but to invest in better brakes. Turns out that is very wise advice. If you want to go fast, you need top be able to stop.

3. In high school, I hung out with motorheads, the autoshop kids. One of my friends bought a 69 Mustang fastback with a 429 Cobrajet motor in it. Problem was he didn’t have his license. I was enlisted to pick it up and drive it to his house.

It was an absolute dog. I had to slip the clutch like mad to get it to go. After about 4 stops, I actually got it into 1st gear instead of 3rd gear, and when I let the clutch out, we laid rubber for about 100 yards, and my friend’s eyes lit up.

Turns out the transmission’s engagement dogs were worn out, and it really didn’t like 1st and 2nd gear.

My friend fixed that, dropped in a hot cam, shaved the heads to increase the compression, and he ran in the 9’s at Baylands raceway.

4. Yeah, I know, I was pissed at a driver bot in a video game. Deal with it.

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