ForzaTimes

I’ve seen a lot of weird stuff on the forums lately, and this week was no exception. I read a car “comparison”, and I use the term loosely, on three cars that I happen to own. I normally enjoy reading others’ feedback and opinions on cars, even if I don’t always agree, but this review really tripped me out. Here at ForzaTimes, it is common knowledge that we are way behind on reviews, with a huge backlog that could keep us busy for months. However, that doesn’t mean we don’t drive the cars we are sent. The three cars reviewed here are a prime example of this.

Over the last year, I have tried, failed, and tried again to get a proper tune on an F430. As one of my favorite cars in real life, it was the first expensive car that I bought when I had the credits. In retrospect, it is a wonder I continued to play the game afterwards.

The F430 is slow, difficult to tune, and just plain ol’ unruly. It has made many a novice swear off rear-wheel-drive cars for weeks or even months at a time. I’ve seen some of the best Forza tuners in the world tackle this car with limited success, but I still try to pick up the new offerings and drive them. Call me a glutton for punishment. So much so, that I actually built one of these cars to campaign in the Forza Le Mans Series GT2 Tournament ran by Dave468.

For that series, many of the racers built all of the cars eligible and ran them to see which one they liked better. Over the next few weeks, the series racers would get together for practice every so often, just to get a feel for everyone’s lap times. JED, Sneaky, Racer6c, and Silverfox were all regulars during these test sessions. We would gift cars back and forth to try each other’s tunes, and it was commonplace to see 5 or 6 F430’s being worked on in a single room. Silverfox and I continued to work on the Ferrari, in the hopes we could get it fast enough to compete with the dominant Porsche 997. For me, the F430 turned out to be too difficult to tune, so I went with a BMW which was much more forgiving over 25 laps. Silverfox ultimately ran the 997 in the series, but never gave up on the F430 tune. So imagine my surprise when I read that “the tune tells me that not enough testing went on” by a bruther on the forums.

Wait a minute. That car has been tuned and raced since October of last year by a multitude of skill levels and some excellent race-tuners, and it is being called “a work in process” and “a slopped together paint and tune”. pfft. I demand a recount. To really insult the community, the reviewer has no credible experience tuning or painting (or racing for that matter), yet feels the need to tell tuners how to improve their cars. Telling tuners to change diff settings… detune the car to A-Class from S-Class (uh… what?)… raise the car up and bring the toe in? Excuse me, but exactly who-in-the-hell do you think you are? This is all utter nonsense and should be treated as such. You need to be able to set a fast time before even thinking about telling someone how to change a tune, and then only when asked.

I had driven all three of these cars before so my BS detector was pegged-out. These reviews must have taken place in wonderland. I don’t want fluff and crap, I want facts. So I thought about this for only a few minutes and I knew what I had to do. A proper review was in order. To make matters interesting, I brought two testers on board. To make matters REALLY interesting, I gave them generic paints so they wouldn’t be able to tell which car they were driving. We referred to them simply as “the yellow one”, “the black one”, and “the motorola one”. The drivers, Racer6c and Sneaky, did not know who created the cars until the end of testing. We had three different assist levels. The drivers ran a combination of no assists, TCS and ABS, and one ran all assists except STM. Also, we noted *gasp* actual lap times for each driver.

Interested? I thought so. So let’s just cut the crap and get to it.

The first track we visted was Mugello Long. We started with the Motorola car, which Sneaky remarked, “took years off his life”. LOL. Did I mention that the F430’s are a handful? We all warmed up and set some decent times. Racer6c remarked that the Motorola car slid very predictably, and that he liked the way it turns in. He used trail-braking with no ABS, and really appreciated the brakes helping to set the attitude of the car. Sneaky and I both ran ABS and noted that the car would slide under braking if you attempted to turn. Braking in a straight-line and letting off the brakes before turning completely eliminated the issue.

The TDS car was next, and I knew what was coming. I silently waited to hear the comments, and it only took about 3 turns. “Wow. This car is EASY to drive!” That pretty much sums it up. Philliewillie worked some major magic with drivability, and it’s obvious. While it does not steer as quickly as the Motorola car, it simply does not lose it’s composure. Sneaky remarked that it had a touch of understeer, which in my opinion undoubtedly helped the stability.

Bringing up the rear was Romi’s F430. This car seemed to have the worst of both cars. It understeered in the turns, yet wasn’t stable enough at race pace. The lap times tell the tale.

For the next track, we decided to mix it up a little and test the cars’ ability at speed. The choice was Sunset Infield. We decided to set the bar with the up-to-this-point faster Motorola Car. The car again showed a great balance between speed and handling for all three drivers so we weren’t surprised when the car felt fast around the track.

I had my doubts about the TDS car’s outright speed potential so we chose it next. While the car was very forgiving, almost A-Class like, it definitely showed a shortcoming, lapping .9 and an astounding 1.6 seconds slower for the guest drivers. It should also be noted that the fastest driver was 2 full seconds slower than 2000th on the leaderboards at Sunset. I’d be prepared to DNF if I chose this car in multiplayer for anything longer than 5 laps.

The RomiTuned car was plagued by high speed stability problems, resulting in a two-car, 165mph, full lock slide into the wall in turn one. We didn’t save the replay, but rest-assured, it would’ve been the mother of all screenshots. We all agreed that it would be easy enough to duplicate, just take two or more of these wide-open into turn one and you’ll have it.

We’re going back to Cali, but first, check out the Sunset Infield lap times below.

Our third track of the test is one we all know and love, Laguna Seca. We’ve driven cars such as these at this track at race pace, so I definitely had thoughts of speed dancing in my head. So as not to give an advantage to the known-fast Motorola car, we decided to run it first, so the later cars would benefit from the warm-ups.

Silverfox’s car ran extremely well, and had a fluid feeling to it while racing around the track. It was a little bit of a handful, and slid around on it’s way to setting the fastest time for two of the three drivers.

The TDS car again drove like a B-Class grip-tune, with tail-wagging incidents few and far between. At the other tracks, the Motorola car was fast enough to be able to run with this car every lap at 8/10ths, but capable of smoking it when you really need it to. Not so much here. The TDS Orange car was capable of running nearly every lap at speed due to the very forgiving nature of the car. It’s just plain easy-to-drive.

The real surprise here was the RomiTuned entry. The car felt planted here, and well… fast. It got a little out of shape when pushed hard by the lower skill driver, ie: me, but Racer and Sneaky both drove it to within .5 of their fast time in the other cars.

After a few hours, we thought we had a good idea of what the cars would do, but we wanted to run one last track to round it out. We decided on a track with multiple elevation changes, Maple Valley.

We drove hard enough to exploit the weaknesses of all the cars, so if you’ve been paying attention, you know by know how this will play out.

The Motorola car showed great speed, but was very loose if you had to brake and turn at the same time. This was similarly true for the many turns in which the car unweighted itself due to bumps and hills.

The RomiTuned car again displayed the worst of both worlds, being out-of-control around most of the track.

The TDS car was by far the easiest to drive here, ranging between .2 and 1.2 faster than the second place car, and 7-seconds-plus faster than the third place car. Again, the proof is in the lap times.

I’ve tried to sit idly by, and I welcome others who want to review cars, but the comparison I read was completely ridiculous, with no basis in reality or fact. To add insult to injury, the aforementioned reviewer has no paint, tuning, or racing experience to speak of. To quote another tester: “People value this guys opinion… but his opinion sucks!”

So, I’ve been accused of compromising and “cooking the books”, a point which couldn’t be further from the truth. On the other hand, people have asked the other person reviewing cars to show us what he’s got, with no response.

I’ll let the readers decide who to believe, but I will go so far as to extend another challenge. Anyone that wants to try Silverfox’s F430 against the others in this test only needs to let me know and I can arrange it.

That said, I like a good summary, so here goes.

“-TDS F430: a must have car. Looks, speed, noises…it’s the complete package at a stupidly low price.” your bruther’s review.

I would say the paint is nice and simple, but not amazing. I’d trade this paint for one of the many F430’s in my garage already.

“-RomiTuned F430: change the build to A850, dial back the diff, and watch people get smaller and smaller in the rear-view mirror. Mesmerizing paint.” your bruther’s review.

The paint is great. Changing the build to A850 and outrunning people in multiplayer is a pipe-dream, so don’t be a sucker. If you already have this car, put TDS’s or EXI’s tune on it. You won’t be sorry.

“-EXI F430 – At best, a work in process…at worst, a slopped together paint & tune.” – your bruther’s review.

C’mon. Are you serious? From novice to expert alike, this car is the fastest on the most tracks. It has been in development to make it FASTER for 5 months. So the paint is horrible? Bid deal. It’s a pleasure to drive and you’d have no choice but to run it over the other cars if you cared at all about a podium, much less winning a race.

All of these cars are terribly slow leaderboard cars, and I could not recommend them unless you are a Ferrari fanatic, or have the option to campaign them in a series with some sort of PI handicapping. If you are in a series, you’d have to run either Silverfox’s or philliewillie’s TDS tune, depending on your needs.

The bottom-line is that on most tracks Silverfox’s tune is better and faster for a variety of drivers. TDS’s tune is bar-none the most forgiving F430 you can purchase but not quite the fastest, and Romi’s is the best-looking, with good performance at least at Laguna Seca.

Racer6c remarked that grading the tunes on a curve, the Motorola car is 10, the TDS car is an 8.75, and the RomiTuned car is a 6, because it was good at one track of the test.

He went on to add, “After reading Bruther’s review, I can see how he came to his conclusions on Romi’s and TDI’s cars. I am still puzzled at how he came to the conclusion he did on the EXI. After reading the related threads, maybe the wrong tune was put out on the EXI.

IF, and only if, the proper tune was on EXI’s car…I think Bruther might have let his previous experience with the F355 influence his opinion of the F430. Another factor was the paint, which he went on at length to complain about. If he was already thinking negatively about the car, he might not have been able to give it a proper drive. With a prejudice that the car was crap; perhaps, it was doomed to fail.

I think this whole debate comes down to two possibilities. Either the wrong tune was applied to the reviewed EXI, or Bruther was prejudiced against the car and unable to form an un-biased opinion.” -Racer6C

P.S.- To all the tuners out there: Don’t let anyone tell you how to tune your cars. Especially those persons without a drop of credibility. Peace out! -FCF iNFERNO