Occasional Tales

My association with this car started way back with the 4C Concept in Most Wanted (2012), where I liked the car (in spite of weird NFS handling). My first encounters with the 4C in FH4 were, I believe, less happy, but it was a car I eventually returned to, rebuilt, and got something better out of it. Since yesterday’s daily was to do a Street Scene race (vomit!) in an Alfa Romeo, I specced the 4C up to A800. RWD, semi-slick tyres and because of the unbalanced weight distribution, aero. It seemed to perform quite well, and it was time to take it for a turn along the usual courses. My overall observation is that the handling is sound around the curves (e.g. Dunas Blancas ) and around the sharper corners (e.g. various sprints and Plaza Circuit ). I decided to turn down the aero to see whether that had any impact on the car, but it didn’t. Even down a wet Copper Canyon there were only occasional, inconsequential slides which probably came from me trying to push it a little too hard. I fini

I tried the car in FH4 to get a feel for it. It was all right in C class, somewhat slow, and occasionally slidey because of the bicycle tyres on it. In B class it was more of the same, but I needed to be subtle with cornering or the back end was prone to step out. A800. Aero time because the car was floaty and slidey through benign corners, dips and rises. Aero helped, and minimum tuning settings seemed to be sufficient. In FH5, the Giulia Sprint wasn’t exactly the same. It took a good deal more fiddling to build a C class car which in the sprint races ( Descansar Dorado , Dunas Blancas and Copper Canyon ) took late leads and struggled to stay ahead of the drivatars. Plaza Circuit was a whole different matter, with my car winning by 15 seconds. I upgraded to semi-slick tyres in B class, but the performance in the sprint races was much the same – a late lead in Descansar Dorado ; not much oomph uphill in Dunas Blancas , but decent cornering; plagued by a Bentley 8 litre in Copper Cany

Prefatory note I’m a smidge late with this one because it was our annual conference (well, for the first time since 2019) at the end of last week and because I was too knackered to start doing the Festival playlist on Friday. I have notes about the 1965 Alfa Romeo Giulia Sprint which need typing up. And now for the main feature… As there was no treasure hunt (thank the gods), I started with the weekly in the Lancia Delta Integrale. Mostly fine, but the danger sign was annoying. There was probably an optimal choice, but no one ever tells you what it is. In the course of doing the weekly, I also took care of the collectibles (I did the hotel danger sign, which threw me at the boat piñatas), which not only got me a horn (gods!), but also got me the Aventador SVJ (which ought to have been the Ferrari F8 Tributo). The PR stunts. I one-shotted the speed trap on the north side of the map in the Diablo SV and got a rubbish SWS. I also used it for the speed zone, following the course of the Sta

I tried the RWD 33 Stradale in FH4 this morning and got a sound performance out of it. Was I going to get the same sort of quality in FH5 (looking at you, Alfa Romeo Giulia Quadrifoglio). On a whim I took it round the Emerald Circuit in FH5 (A800, RWD, senza aero) and found it to be too floaty. There was also some weird drivatar behaviour with the drivatar in the GT40 Mk II driving very slowly and probably not even completing a full lap. I’ve never seen this sort of thing before. Overall, the 33 Stradale dominated all the races, and I’d recommend aero, but depending on the event, lowest aero settings seem fine. The Giulia TZ2 (A800, RWD, senza aero) is even lighter than the 33 Stradale. I tried it round the Estadio Circuit, but it got floaty through the dips and the rises, and I added aero. Like the 33 Stradale, that needs to be tuned for the course, although I note again that some parts of Dunas Blancas could do with aero and others don’t need it at all. I increased the aero for Plaza

I remember this car being added to FH4 fairly late on. I’m not a fan of retro saloons, which look like bricks and weigh about the same as a house. I’ve probably driven the car once in Horizon 4, although I made up for it today in FH5. I started out with a B-class build. The car was all right in Descansar Dorado and Copper Canyon, but struggled in Dunas Blancas against a Bentley Turbo R. It merely stayed ahead of the drivatars round Plaza Circuit, but never managed to pull away. It was a bit odd in that there were some parts of these races where aero was needed and others where it would’ve been a hindrance. I then tried an A-class build. In Descansar Dorado and Dunas Blancas, I raced senza aero, but felt in both cases, especially the latter, that aero would’ve been a Good Idea™ because the car felt floaty and slidey. I added aero before trying Copper Canyon, which was much like the previous two races in that there were places where aero was helpful and others where it seemed unnecessar

A Tale of Two Games. It took me a long time to make something of the Giulia Quadrifoglio in FH4. I wanted to like the car, but it wasn’t until I applied Modern Tuning™ that I had something drivable. With the introduction of Alfa Romeo in Horizon 5, the car was back. I was sort of hoping for the more recent model, but the 2017 one will do. I started with an RWD build of the car, taking it into mid-S1 class. It’s understeery. It’s not excessively understeery, but I’m used to RWD builds having good turn-in. It suffers through sharp turns as well, being one of those cars where I have to slow down a lot, lift off, coast, straighten up, and get back on the power. Meanwhile, the drivatars are ploughing into such corners as if they’re nothing. More usually, the Giulia’s tail starts to wiggle because the drivatars don’t have to worry about coasting or racing in RWD cars on a keyboard, and coasting causes you to lose time. I added aero, but that didn’t help as much as I hoped it would. The car s

So, it seems that for the treasure hunt I have to drive the Maserati GT S from Mulegé to Guanajuato. A few minutes later… That didn’t work. Perhaps I should’ve used the FE Maserati GT S because that’s in the picture. A few minutes later… That didn’t work. House-to-house? A few minutes later… That didn’t work. Perhaps it might work after I reboot my laptop. The next day… What?! Why aren’t you bloody well working?! [Interlude.] I decide to give it one more go, but this time veer off the motorway and head cross country towards Guanajuato, slamming into the houses on the south side of the town. Job done. FFS. Since the update, the chance that I’m actually online in free roam and seeing other players has improved. It won’t last, but it meant I could do an HA to tick that off the playlist. The weekly was in the Abarth 595. I think the game told me that one event was complete, and the rest of the time I had to check. The Eventlab tiles were working. I started with Forest Mountain Circuit , wh

Ferrari Roma, Lamborghini STE, Lamborghini Essenza. I raced the Ferrari Roma round the Horizon Festival Circuit in the same configuration as I used for the HW Goliath (eight-speed gearbox; RWD). No. It may have 50% weight distribution, but the back end is looser than my ageing bowels. I wondered whether a six-speed gearbox might be the answer, and although that helped a little, the car was still very twitchy round corners. Aero doesn’t rescue it, but AWD does, and the resulting understeer isn’t dire. At least, that’s my experience on a keyboard. The Lamborghini Huracán STE (does it have the longest name of any car in the game?) is meant to be an extreme track toy, but, I feel, is in the wrong class. The Huracán STO ought to be a modern supercar, not a track toy. The STE should be a track toy, not an extreme track toy. It struggled against the Sesto Elemento, the 599XX Evo, and the Ariel Atom. I shouldn’t be winning Copper Canyon by hundredths of seconds, but that’s what happened. The c

With notes on other new cars. The update was 16Gb. I suspect 1Gb of it was content and bug fixes, and the other 15Gb was the additional slots for cars, liveries and tunes. I went back to Mexico and bought the new DLC. I went pootling this morning and racing this afternoon. The Ferrari 296 GTB has the usual blah perks[1]. It gets 2/9 for stock tuning settings[2], and the gears are too short from 1-3 and too long at the top end even if the car does eventually get there. I raced it round the HW Goliath with handling upgrades but no aero. The car is fast and grippy and quite possibly the best of the bunch. The Ferrari Roma[3] has a 150% perk, but presumably only if you race it in a seasonal[4]. Stock tuning is also 2/9 with silly gear settings, but the weight distribution is 50%. From the HW Goliath it became clear that the car needs aero. It’s not as planted as the 296 GTB. I’ll mention the Italdesign Da Vinci Concept[5]. Big, fat barge. I drove it from the Festival site towards the speed

Finally an update which deserves the accolade. We finally have an update that will be difficult to dethrone as the Best Evah™ along with DLC which can also be accorded the same honour. We knew what was coming and we’re not being disappointed. All right, the cars are all recycled from FH4. The Lancia Fulvia is missing (shame) and the Alfa Romeo Stelvio (don’t care). I thought the Abarth 124 might be omitted because it’s merely a Mazda MX-5, and I feared the Biposto 695 might be replaced with the Abarth EV that Tim “Shmee150” Burton recently added to his garage. This update deserves praise because it has five decent cars for every shrug. As for the DLC, which is about £8, it’s worth it almost all the way. The previous DLC was one good car (the Emira), one sexy car (the Huayra R), and two that you were stuck with to get what you wanted. I’m guessing that some of the Lamborghinis have been imported from Forza Motorsport as promo for that game. I don’t know why the Italdesign Da Vinci Conc

The treasure hunt was to smash ten things with a GT car. The treasure is just near the Horizon Street Scene outpost, which was handy because I could then get specced up for the weekly. The weekly challenge was driving the Lexus RC F. Although the photo task referred to some grey colour, the car didn’t have to be in that colour for it to be completed. I used the Marathon to complete the clean racing skills task, although it was overkill. This is not the first time we’ve had to take a photo of this particular mural in Colinas Aridas – if I remember rightly. I knew it was somewhere and I knew it was nowhere near the part of the map which is labelled Colinas Aridas. It’s on the side of one of the buildings just south of the start of Cruce del Valle. This is the sort of pointless task that wastes my time because the area is so vaguely defined and as I’m never travelling in the right direction, I’m unfamiliar with the painting. The Eventlab tiles were functioning this week. Mulegé Street Cir

And some observations about Forza aero. In the interests of research, I did some builds of these cars (RWD) in B and A class. The B-class versions are drivable, but in spite of the BRZ and the GT86 being same-actress-different-hair, the former had worse handling through corners, being prone to wheel spin and sliding. The curious thing here is that the weight distribution of the BRZ was 54% to the GT86’s 53%, but that 1% seemed to make all the difference. Overall, the cars are too chunky and too slow in B class to do more than struggle, but I was going for handling builds as I want to be able to tune these things. The GR86 has even less scope for upgrading to the top of B class, but in performance, is much like the GT86 in this class. The A-class build of the BRZ was much like the B-class one, being terrible through corners as it was still prone to wheel spin and sliding. The A-class GT86 continued to have superior handling, which got me curious as to why there was such a difference. I

From the tile, I guessed that the car for the treasure hunt was going to be the Caterham R500 doing that precarious danger sign next to that Festival site… No, I don’t know the names. Too old to remember or to care to remember. Anyway, just ahead of the change to the new season, I’d been practising. Without engine swapping the car, I’d upgraded it as far as I could and had determined that it probably wasn’t going to three-star the jump (I was hoping this wouldn’t be required). I did one last run with about a minute to spare and fast travelled up to the Festival site with the timer running out. I was sitting outside the site when the new season went live and was informed that I’d completed the task for the treasure hunt. I don’t quite know how that transpired, but I shan’t complain. The weekly was in the 1987 Pontiac Firebird, a car which I like so much that I’d never driven it and would never have driven it if this particular task hadn’t required me to. The late 80s rang, but was too e