The TORA Outsider Presents: TCR N.A.F.F.Car Season 2

by AMR of the Apex Mon 27 Jul 2015 - 19:39

Presenting: N.A.F.F.Car Season II

PLOW Tubbi (NAFFCar Season 1 Champion) wrote:Mikey followed on from a format conceived in real life racing and did a damned fine job of twisting the forza platform to best suit the flavour and essence of the original real life racing.

The car choices were picked to offer the same usual fairness, and I must admit to picking a car deliberately to have fun in, I had no idea (the series) would be so competitive. After the first meeting was said and done and realising the quite large turn out for the event I decided that a more competitive car was needed as I had it on good authority that this was now going to turn into a RACE.

It is always so enjoyable when other drivers really get stuck in to the championship, tuning the cars to within an inch of their lives and practising most nights honing the skills needed for that track. It really was all put to the test.

I was not expecting to win the championship as my chosen car was not as suited as the others to do the things I was asking it to do, the tuning went into overtime.

If a championship and all its regulations are in place and suit the majority of drivers then to quote Field of Dreams 'they will come'.

It's very difficult to back an event on Forza in my current situation as "an outsider" of all things xbox, as well as being "The Outsider" for TORA.

"Nothing But Grass-roots" that was an influence behind the crazy idea I had a couple of years ago, and reflects the way TORA and most Forza league racers have been doing things since Turn 10 made this game 10 years ago, you buy your car, you turn it into something to go racing with.

The first influence was Flying Mikey J's first TORA LeMons, I was part of the live-stream commentary team (which has magically disappeared from the TORA Twitch webpage). Seeing how many people were keen to drive something that isn't a multi-million "Cr." Prototype Le Mans winner, or a loophole breaking touring car. I practically "gifted" Mikey this car list for the first season, based on simplicity:

Naturally Aspirated engines, so you couldn't add a turbo/super charger.

Front Wheel Drive, so you couldn't change it into a rear or four wheel drive machine.

Cars that are originally on the Forza 4 game, and not added later as DLC, therefore everyone who's got the game, from the TORA Veteran to a complete newcomer, can take part.

The cars must not cost more than 9000cr. And aside from the tight restrictions on Aspiration of the engine and not being able to convert the cars to a better performance of drive type, you're still allowed to tune the car, so long as the engine doesn't put out more than 200 brake horse power, doesn't weigh less than 2100 pounds, and doesn't crack out more than 393 performance index points, therefore making it challenging for forza fluent engineers, as well as being cheap, and cheerful.

This left 16 cars, 8 manufacturers, with the majority being Honda built, and a healthy amount of Volkswagens to have yourself the kind of rivalry you'd expect between the fans of both Marques. All of them very "Club Level" or "Grass-roots", and over 10 years old, almost as if they've lived their lives out in the hands of careful owners racking in the numbers on the mileometer/odometer, broken down in the middle of nowhere and had to be towed away, rescued from the scrapyard by your good selves, given a race roll-cage, given a lick of Motorsport paint, and sacrificed to the Motorsport gods in a high speed Viking burial. Maybe you've still got your '92 Golf from the TORA MSA V.A.G. Trophy and still think there's some mileage left in it before it goes kaput.

I'm glad to see this series go into another season, with a few tweaks to the schedule and race format that I was originally concerned about, but realise they make the competition even closer than the inaugural series. To say the first series worked is an understatement.