Forza 4 vs GT5 physics (read the first post before contributing)

[Tenacious D]

It does seem like I'm going through something similar to what the Dutch autoguy is experiencing. He looks to be doing a lot of twitchy steering, constantly trying to correct the car through turns, which is what I'm doing. As I mentioned to Scaff offboard, the cars are communicating with him in ways they just aren't with me, and this is requiring a lot of fishing through turns.

Maybe I'm overdoing something, but if I am, it's up to the car to let me know that in some way. In other games, this is usually handled through tire noise, letting you know how happy the car is with its grip on the road, and is something GT5, GTR and LFS do pretty well, though I am juicing up the tire volume all the way in the GTRs to do so, and I believe in Live For Speed too, though I can't recall the audio parameters offhand, it's been a while. Unfortunately, EVERY car in Forza 4 sounds like it has no muffler and the engine noise is overdone, so if the tires are making any whispers to me, they have no chance of being heard. And this can cause a few issues.

Forza's suspension is another factor, being more springy in feel to GT5's. Whether realistic or exaggerated is hard to say, but I've never felt so uncomfortable being in a pack of cars on standard or sports suspensions, and trying not to wobble into them.

 

[HAL20XX]

Unfortunately, EVERY car in Forza 4 sounds like it has no muffler and the engine noise is overdone, so if the tires are making any whispers to me, they have no chance of being heard. And this can cause a few issues.

Try setting the audio focus to "tires" in the settings. It's not a drastic difference, but it helps a little. I don't know why they removed individual audio sliders.

 

[mistercheeto72]

I like both games but the Forza oversteer slide gets old. Using a sh$&y MS wheel now and will be getting the Fanatec, expecting this will improve things a bit?

 

[sugarload]

Tenacious D

It does seem like I'm going through something similar to what the Dutch autoguy is experiencing. He looks to be doing a lot of twitchy steering, constantly trying to correct the car through turns, which is what I'm doing. As I mentioned to Scaff offboard, the cars are communicating with him in ways they just aren't with me, and this is requiring a lot of fishing through turns.

Been hearing that quite a bit actually from other people that I know. Seeing the racing car expert acknowledge that as well and of course yourself, tells me there has to be something not quite right going on there...

 

[Tenacious D]

Try setting the audio focus to "tires" in the settings. It's not a drastic difference, but it helps a little. I don't know why they removed individual audio sliders.

I did, I did! However, the problem seems to be that because I can only manage to drive well in chase view, the engine racket is drowning out all but the loudest tire sounds. A relative who does enthusiast autocrossing came over last night to try out GT5 Spec II since he hasn't been able to set up his own racing rig for a few months, and I unleashed Forza 4 on him before he left. He uses bumper cam almost exclusively, and we could hear the tires complaining a bit through turns.

I really miss those sliders now, because tire sound is the primary way to judge how happy your car is with its level of grip on the road, at least for me.

Tenacious D

Been hearing that quite a bit actually from other people that I know. Seeing the racing car expert acknowledge that as well and of course yourself, tells me there has to be something not quite right going on there...

My relative experienced the issue of the nose wanting to keep turning a few times in his short session with the 240SX, his real life ride. After puzzling it over for a bit, he pointed out a few things.

Because I use chase cam, I can only hear the tires when they're close to grip loss. Using bumper cam, he's more in touch with how well the tires are doing. It's a little quiet, but all the sounds are there.

He noted that if the nose wanted to continue into the turn, you'd feel it in a real car and stop it before it got anywhere.

"Look at this," he said, and jiggled the wheel rapidly back and forth about 30 degrees, and the car kind of wobbled to and fro going down the track but kept going straight. "You can't do this in real life or your car would lose it. There's kind of a wide dead zone and reduced input outside that, or something going on. They might have done this to make it feel less twitchy, but all it does is make the car feel loose, and you end up driving twitchy anyway. So when that oversteer thing starts up, your view is too far back so you don't catch it until it's too late, and then have to twitch out of it."

He said the Fanatec wheel would probably make a good bit of difference and suggested I buy one right away.

So he sees my points, but mostly agrees with Scaff on this. While he's not totally sold on the physics completely, he sees that with the massive amount of money MS evidently paid for Forza 4, it seems like they captured the dynamics of a car in ways he hasn't seen in a racing game yet.

 

[James Birch]

First let me say I really enjoy Forza 4 and I am not hating BUT I can't connect with the cars in quite the same positive way as I can in GT5.

The cars seem to drive a little like caricatures of their real life counter parts. The E92 M3 for example. It's only mild but I prefer the GT5 model.

The game is great fun though so it's really only a minor thing.

 

[Bones Brigade]

In my brief time with Forza 4, I was pretty impressed with the low speed physics and the power on physics, for FWD, AWD and RWD cars. I drove the S60R, SVT Focus and TVR Sagaris. There was however, the sense of too much overall grip. Well, maybe not too much grip, but it was really easy to get the car to grip after lost traction. If I made a mess of a corner, it was pretty easy to get in back in line.

This feeling also adds a bit of realism, oddly enough, in FWD cars. When the front pulls wide, you can let off the gas and shortly thereafter the tires regain traction and the car turns abruptly in your intended direction. Compare this to GT where the car just kind of slows down and the grip seems lost until you straighten it out on your own. Keep in mind, I wasn't driving very fast. I hated the controller setup, having to brake and turn with the same hand, so I was taking it easy. I never quite got the the limit of the cars on a regular basis.

It's also worth noting I played with ABS off. And it was way easy not to get the brakes to lock up. I think I locked up twice in the TVR around the Nurburgring. This is probably due to the triggers on the XBOX controller being firmer than the PS3 joysticks.

My lap of TGTT in the S60R resulted in a realistic feeling drive, but a quick lap of 1:30. And it was not clean. I've heard that when Top Gear did their test, they had problems with the AWD system, so that slowed it a bit and they got a 1:35. But looking at the cars ahead of it, I doubt it would have been close to 1:30. 1:32-33 seems more realistic given the other cars occupying those slots. And don't say "in video games you have no fear so you go faster." I wasn't at the limit, as I've said. I was going hard, but not trying to set fast times. I don't know what this says about the physics, if anything, but it was interesting nonetheless.

Overall I can't say. GT5 seems a bit harder to drive with a controller, as even though the XBOX setup bugs me, I wasn't all over the place. And this was the first driving game I'd ever played on XBOX.

 

[another_jakhole]

http://www.motortrend.com/features/consumer/1009_gran_turismo_5/viewall.html

^^^

 

[Ecchi-BANZAII!!]

Conclusion in this thread:
Tire tuning > realistic physics.

GT5 >>>>>>>>>> solar system >>>>>> FM4

 

[ka-mai]

I think gt5 has the most realistic physic interms of cornering speed and top end speed.....(truncated)

Nice reply. IMHO I think you can never say too much, when describing our fave games, esp. when it's studied content :-)

Thanks for the post.

I dont play FORZA, but I am reading between the lines here and it seems that GT5 does have the edge for realistic physics. Certainly, Im enjoying "downgrading" many of my cars to reduce the grip levels to get a better, more "lively" feel out of them, at the expense of lap-times, but improved fun-factor and involvement. I am finding the Classic Supercars seem to be best for this. Like the Miura and older Ferraris. Great fun.

 

[Tenacious D]

Im enjoying "downgrading" many of my cars to reduce the grip levels to get a better, more "lively" feel out of them, at the expense of lap-times, but improved fun-factor and involvement.

When others suggested this earlier in the year, I tried it out when I had the time to experiment with the brake settings, and it is amazing how much of a difference it makes. Turn off all the driving aids, and the stability of the car goes way down, and is entirely up to your driving. Some people have a blast with it, but it's such a handful for me, I have to have Anti-skid and Stability Management on so I can drive as aggressively as I want. It's still not hard to lose it in turns and while braking, and definitely livens things up. Also keep racing tires to your guilty pleasure races or online. Use sports for race cars and comforts for your sports cars, and you'll find that the driving is more challenging and realistic.

I hadn't thought that the MS FFB wheel had much of a dead zone, but after my bud showed it to me, I can see why connecting to the cars in Forza are more vague and troublesome. This makes chase cam view much harder, especially far view, because it's difficult to be on top of what the tires are experiencing and the inertia of the car. It looks like I'm going to have to knuckle down and school myself on cockpit view. I tried it in some races last night in GT5, and it was surprisingly easy, and felt eerily like being in a car. I can see why people complain about the wheel and bot hands on the screen. And the views are too far back and low in both games, which is why I periodically suggest making ALL views adjustable in both games, so you can set things up to suit you, as many sims do it. If I could stick the camera above the roof or where I want in the cockpit, I have a feeling I'd love Forza about as much as GT5.

As it stands now, I still feel much more connected in the car in GT5, so I'm going to be sticking with it for a while. I have a big vacation coming up soon in which I can work on getting dialed in on Forza, and see how well that goes.

Anyhow, back to Spa. I've only tried 50 cars on it, and have 990 to go.

 

[Ecchi-BANZAII!!]

So I can drive as aggressively as I want.

This is why driving aids should be off.
Less rammers and "I know what I'm doing", less crashing and kicking.

 

[mrkevans]

This is why driving aids should be off.
Less rammers and "I know what I'm doing", less crashing and kicking.

I totally agree, driving aids are for people that should not race online, mainly used by noobs that ruin a race

 

[Tenacious D]

Those are some mighty boastful posts, there. Keep in mind that a lot of real life racers, motocrossers and drifters are members of this board, and race with ABS at 1. This evidently includes one or two clicks of every assist, even though it won't show it on the parameter list.

For that matter, what about those who race with softer tires to improve their performance? Is that any less of an assist? And what about those race cars in real life which come with certain driving features implemented, not to mention sports cars, which usually have all of them?

We don't get a crew chief with Gran Turismo, or most racers for that matter, who's job it is to set up a race car so it's as easy to handle as possible for the driver. It's up to us to see how we can configure our car so it performs on the track in a way that enables us to push it as fast around turns as we can, and past as many competitors as possible.

 

[skazz]

I've been mulling over this question myself recently, after spending quite a few hours back in GT5 then comparing to Forza 4.

Basically I want to love Forza 4's driving, because I do love the menus and the car list, and the AI and track selection is also pretty decent. However.... just like Forza 3 there is too much hidden assistance.

I call it "heroic mode": In Forza 3 you could hold any slide with a lazy and far too slow countersteer. In Forza 4 you have perhaps half as much time for countersteering but you can still heroically hold almost any slide with ease. In GT5 you actually have to stab the wheel almost immediately into a countersteer otherwise you are too late, too slow and into the wall.

For me, because so many RWD cars in Forza 4 get loose so easily, the whole heroic mode assists are just annoying. Of course, if you drive cleanly and accurately you can avoid entering heroic mode and then the steering and physics feel believable (if a little twitchy).

 

[CromaTurboIE]

sorry ot!

is there a comparison intelligence IA! 👍

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=VdXriG8P31E

 

[azrael1965]

I call it "heroic mode": In Forza 3 you could hold any slide with a lazy and far too slow countersteer. In Forza 4 you have perhaps half as much time for countersteering but you can still heroically hold almost any slide with ease. In GT5 you actually have to stab the wheel almost immediately into a countersteer otherwise you are too late, too slow and into the wall.

For me, because so many RWD cars in Forza 4 get loose so easily, the whole heroic mode assists are just annoying. Of course, if you drive cleanly and accurately you can avoid entering heroic mode and then the steering and physics feel believable (if a little twitchy).

And i thought i became a real good driver in Forza 4. Your explanation destroys my delusions.

 

[CromaTurboIE]

I do not like the behavior of the Ferrari 458 italia of Forza 4 seems to have the hydropneumatic Citroen pallas ds! -_-

 

[Scaff]

I've been mulling over this question myself recently, after spending quite a few hours back in GT5 then comparing to Forza 4.

Basically I want to love Forza 4's driving, because I do love the menus and the car list, and the AI and track selection is also pretty decent. However.... just like Forza 3 there is too much hidden assistance.

I call it "heroic mode": In Forza 3 you could hold any slide with a lazy and far too slow countersteer. In Forza 4 you have perhaps half as much time for countersteering but you can still heroically hold almost any slide with ease. In GT5 you actually have to stab the wheel almost immediately into a countersteer otherwise you are too late, too slow and into the wall.

For me, because so many RWD cars in Forza 4 get loose so easily, the whole heroic mode assists are just annoying. Of course, if you drive cleanly and accurately you can avoid entering heroic mode and then the steering and physics feel believable (if a little twitchy).

I find it rather worrying that once again we are seeing the 'it must be real because its difficult' school of thought coming into play.

I've driven and got sideways enough cars to confidently state that neither state of affairs is 100% accurate, and its far (in reality) down to the individual car.

Yes the likes of a Clio V6 should be incredibly snappy once you go over the limit, and very rapid but smooth correction is required to fix it. I know this because I very nearly binned one.

In contrast my 3-series was incredibly easy to initiate power-on oversteer (slight bit of understeer than pushed into oversteer very willingly) it and also easy to hold. You also needed much slower and measured inputs to hold it sideways as well.

At times GT5 is far, far to difficult in terms of holding a car sideways, particularly at lower speeds, and at times FM4 is a little too forgiving. GT5 handles high-speed 'tank-slappers well, while the tyre models and how grip builds and falls progresively is modelled very, very well in FM4. However if I had to give the nod to one it would be FM4, mainly because it actually makes a good stab at modelling how tyres scrub off speed when sideways, which is very difficult to predict in GT5.

I do not like the behavior of the Ferrari 458 italia of Forza 4 seems to have the hydropneumatic Citroen pallas ds! -_-

Really, I've driven quite few Citroen's with hydropneumatic suspension (BX, CS and a DS) and owned two (both BX's) and at no time have they sprung to mind when driving the 458 in FM4.



Scaff

 

[CromaTurboIE]

Really, I've driven quite few Citroen's with hydropneumatic suspension (BX, CS and a DS) and owned two (both BX's) and at no time have they sprung to mind when driving the 458 in FM4.



Scaff

I like more the GT5 ferrari 458 italia, feels stiffness of shock absorbers 👍, which seems Forza4 more of a soft!👎

 

[Rich S]

Forza lacks ample tracks & racing specific cars. They have no F1 cars, no ovals, etc, etc. Part of the "experience" of road course racing is experiencing a car with a downforce specific setup designed for circuit racing. In order to compare realism you need to see if there's proper "wheel weight" on a higher downforce car. The force feedback is important. A good motion simulator would make all these games 70% more realistic because in real life its quite physical with a fast car.

The clutch is EXTREMELY hard to get right if you've never done one before while RACING. In i racing many guys take a long time to even get a clean lap off from what I read. If Forza does a good job of simulating the clutch then thats a plus.

I've played a bit of X-box before and its not as good in general as PS3 games.

 

[ItsHim]

The real question for me would be: is the physics engine of FM4 bulletproof (enough) that it still feels realistic after a good amount of suspension tuning.

Comparing stock vehicle behaviour isn't that relevant to me because it misses the point of Forza IMO.

 

[kimi123]

I don't speak dutch , so i can rely only on the english translation of the youtube video. But from my understanding he meant that the real life car is easier to drive and doesn't skid as much as its FM4 counterpart. This would actually in accordance with the other reviews you posted, which describe the LFA as a predictable and easy to correct car. I believe as a former dutch touring car champion, Autoweek testdriver and having driven a real LFA at the Nürburgring just recently( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvL4aubO6yY ), the guy should know what he is talking about.

http://www.rllmukforum.com/index.php?showtopic=236434&st=2200
On this website is stated that he prefers GT5s handling. ( 'He just noted the handling in Gran Turismo 5 felt better overall, as the cars feels more nervous when driving on the limit - like real high-performance and race cars do, apparantly' ) If true or not , i cannot tell. But if it's true i believe his opinion. At least i haven't found a opinion from someone better qualified. (At least regarding to LFA and Nordschleife)

Thanks for the links. It is always intresting to see what race driver think about the games. 👍

I already knew that you work in the motor industry and to say the truth your opinion (and of others in this threat) was the most significant reason why i believed that Forza 4s physics might be superior. You are certainly much more qualified then me to judge the physics.
But what i do not believe is that i should dismiss this dutch race drivers opinion , just because he didn't drive the LFA Nürburgring Edition instead of the normal version in the game. If Forzas simulation was so good, why didn't he say something like:' No it's not handling like the LFA Nürburgring Edition, more like the normal LFA' but 'In real life a super sports car like this has much more grip, and responds more direct. Therefore it skids very little.'. 'So real life sports car like this' should count for LFA, LFA Nürburgring Edition and some others as well.
I have studied medicine, where expert opinion is all important. If an expertise is needed, you try to get it from the best person available. To me this dutch driver seems to be well qualified to comment on the realism of driving games in relation to real life race cars and super cars. And i might add, that i still value your opinion, but that doesn't mean that i will dismiss others. Maybe FM4 might be better at simulating low powered cars?

Don't bother with him. Just look at this thread and his love of Forza is quite evident. Everyone have their opnion which racing game they prefer but race driver opnion is really intresting

 

[ROYALEFATALE]

I totally agree, driving aids are for people that should not race online, mainly used by noobs that ruin a race

from my experience no aids = more accidents, noobs will race no matter what and when they have no SRF or TCS they're more likely to ruin the race for the skilled drivers anyway, unless you have pole position you're basically ****ed as far as getting around them. (esp on Nur)

 

[Scaff]

Don't bother with him. Just look at this thread and his love of Forza is quite evident. Everyone have their opnion which racing game they prefer but race driver opnion is really intresting

You may want to take a look at my entire posting history (in particular the links to the tuning guides I wrote for GT that are linked in my thread) before making such a wildly inaccurate statement again.


Scaff

 

[Spagetti69]

Forza lacks ample tracks & racing specific cars. They have no F1 cars, no ovals, etc, etc.

Why don't people play the game before posting nonsense and proving they have no idea on the subject matter.

No ovals? No racing cars?

As for hidden assist I'm not sure about that.

I use a wheel and when wheel weight transfers and car starts to go sideways I can let my wheel slip through my grip and catch it when needed.
I'm sure that's the torque alignment kicking in. Basically the front wheels straightening out to which ever direction my nose is going.

Pad users obviously don't have a FF function through the stick so I believe an aid is present to simulate that feature.
Maybe the simulation feature for pads gets rid of that.
I'm not sure as I don't use a pad.

All I know for certain is that Forza is the better game. IMHO of course.

 

[Tenacious D]

Forza is definitely the better painting and wrecking game, anyhow.

But... I don't know anymore. I tried Forza again last night after spending more than a week with GT5 on Spa, and who could resist that? I'd stopped at the beginning of the League of Legends level which are all the R Class and extreme exotics like the Koenigseggs, which was probably a bad level to try a reintroduction.

It wasn't pretty. It was rough. It was sloppy and haphazard, emphasis on hazard.

It wasn't a total train wreck. I remembered enough to hop into an Audi R10 and be halfway competent. I could sort of hit apexes, and more or less make my turns okay, and tailgate the bots to an extent, and win. After several restarts, because the bots are simply moronic. I got a great reacquaintence with the damage modeling.

But this is the most non-intuitive racer I've seen since Enthusia, which is also still highly regarded by a handful of devotees. But I hated it. It has the same problems, mostly driver views which don't suit me, and tires that wouldn't communicate well. It was a real challenge to keep a 240SX on the track. At least with Forza, I can do that. But it's just not like any other racer, except the Need For Speeds.

Some people hate Forza physics. I don't, but some aspects of what's going on when you throw a car around turns just don't feel natural. Any other racer - besides Enthusia and Ferrari Challenge, the other Forza - I can grasp the flavor of physics after a little practice and figure out the boundaries. I can in short order nurse a low to mid level car though turns fairly well. With Forza, in a car with any sort of muscle without racing tires and suspension, it's a fight. In supercars and race cars, it's still a fight. Add in bots which are complete tards and you have the recipe for one hell of an ordeal.

Something just isn't connecting with me. A number of people obviously love the thing, but I have to wonder what in the name of Enzo Ferrari you guys are getting that I'm not.

I'm going to give the game a run with some lower class cars in hopefully saner races, try cockpit view and see how it goes. But I have a feeling that GT5 is going to be my racer, and Forza 4 my painter.

 

[Spagetti69]

^ I could have told you that GT will be your game last year.
Saved you some cash.

 

[Tenacious D]

Well... it was interesting.

I tried a couple of VW Golfs, and made the mistake of doing a quick livery on one, which fortunately was just a few hours. But the racing was strange. I'm not sure why so many racers set the cockpit view too low. It's like they used "shoulder cam" or something to get all their videos. GT5 is tolerable, but for whatever reason, Forza's 3D is weird to me. I had to drop cockpit view, and cycled around a bit. In all of the views, the tires were still too quiet until they were barking, and I recall that I was able to hear them with my relative's session because I got close to the TV. All these cars are so freaking loud, I never get an exhaust upgrade because I doubt I could stand the distorted noise that resulted.

It was much better in a C Class car and I felt more in control, but I still had to fight most of the turns, no matter what view I used, so I went to the close chase and stuck with that. I had already put in so may hours with the game that the oversteer thing wasn't much of a problem.

I had hopped out of World Tour mode and grabbed a race on the matrix, and found that the bots were suddenly competent. Maybe it was the lower class racing, but I couldn't count on the leader falling asleep at the wheel and flying off the track to gain a position anymore. It was tough. It was still bashy for a while, but this time it was my fault as I tried to fish my way around turns well, and I had to really focus on every foot of travel and degree of turn. Victory was elusive, and I had to do several races against these homologated cars to finally gold a track or two. On my other racers this would have been fun, but it was such a struggle trying to find that edge of grip so I could be competitive with bots which drove almost perfectly, that it became irritating and exhausting. The race at Montserrat became particularly frustrating as the bots gradually all pulled away from me around the tight peanut shaped track, and after several tries I couldn't manage better than 4th.

I don't know what the deal is, and I'm sure you Forza lovers think I'm some kind of knot head, but... it's just strange. All the techniques I gleaned from playing the GTRs and Live For Speed don't work well for me. The cars just won't communicate with me very well. I went back to GT5 to try and set up a car for saturday's Spa race, as I don't want to have the same car as everyone else - I'm just too much of an individual. Everything came back into focus and I felt right at home. In fact, it was ridiculously easy to race on racing hard tires and ABS at 1, though I still had to drive carefully for every tenth of a second of lap time. But it was such a relief to race cars that made sense and told me much more clearly just what was going on.

Forza 4 really is a game you have to try for a while, because either you'll fall in love or pull your hair out, and there doesn't seem to be much middle ground.

^ I could have told you that GT will be your game last year.
Saved you some cash.

Eh, if Forza 3 didn't have time demolishing file bogging, I'd agree with you, but I'm not sure MS even lets it on their servers anymore. F4 has too many good things going for it, at least in the car collecting and livery painting aspects for me to toss it. But... yikes, what a pain it can be.

 

[ka-mai]

When others suggested this earlier in the year, I tried it out when I had the time to experiment with the brake settings, and it is amazing how much of a difference it makes. Turn off all the driving aids, and the stability of the car goes way down, and is entirely up to your driving. Some people have a blast with it, but it's such a handful for me, I have to have Anti-skid and Stability Management on so I can drive as aggressively as I want.

Sorry for the following, its a little off topic for the OP...but here goes anyway:

It's what makes this simulator (gt5) so involving, the fact that the learning curve is so gradual. You have to put 100's of hours, 10's of 1000's of KM driving different vehicles of all different drivetrains and setups, to begin to get to grips (no pun intended) with it even fairly comprehensively, and then the fun really starts. Whether the physics are real or not is a fairly moot point. I think that it's more whether the physics are complex enough to challenge our senses for extended periods to keep coming back for more, that is the factor here to be considered. After all, is it essential that certain traits of the setting up of the vehicle and its handling are not wholly realistic, or more important that they are involving enough to engage us wholly?

I think the physics have parallels with reality and ARE complex enough to allow the illusion of actually interfacing with something real.

There are moments when I am driving this thing and thinking "yes!" this is so cool, so "real", when I am so connected with the vehicle. It's rare and mostly on Nurburg when it happens.

You have the joy to come in future of peeling back the layers in the sim to be able to handle increasingly powerful cars without the aids with aplomb. I'm addicted to the physics, myself, such as they are, and I think they're pretty realistic :-) - purely from the feeling of involvement I get from driving a good car fast round an awkward track like Nurburgring. I had the same sensation when I drove fast in my AMG Merc in the mountain roads local to me.

Ref your comment about driving aggressively, I know what you mean, but I also thing this will wear off after a few more hundred hrs under your belt, you'll begin to seek the finesse, the subtelty of controlling a 500 hp car like the Miura without the aids. Try it, with the Ferrari 512, its a bit similar, if you haven't got the Miura, turn off all the aids (apart from perhaps ABS1) put Racing Hards on or Sports Hards, and mod it to around 450-500hp and weight down to around 1300 and really work on throttle control. Dont worry about the laptimes or anything other than controlling your vehicle and pushing it to the limit, without losing it. I guarantee you'll have fun.

Ps.. I find the "classic" powerful vehicles much more of a blast in this respect than the modern cars. Apart from perhaps the GT40 crowd. Now, they are super...