I seem to remember you jumped ship from Ferrari Challenge because you weren't happy about the field of view, but whatever.
Well, that's when I quit discussing things on the boards. But from what I remember of the game, the towel thrower for me was fighting to keep out of the way of the bots in the Virginia course in the rain in one of the later races. That rain animation was pretty lame, by the way, just a video overlay of a static rain capture looped. It did let you know it was raining though.
But true, I couldn't get comfy with any of the camera views in FC. They were all atrocious, and the best I could do was use chase cam. But close was too low, so the car blocked your view of the track. Far was too far and still too low.
I never played Forza II but you're the only one I know who's ever made, and continues to draw analogies between Forza II and FC.
Probably because I'm the rare individual who played both, and wasn't a huge fan of either.
But one important distinction I want to make. Ferrari Challenge was a very polarizing game. You either loved it or hated it and few took the middle ground. I was very enamored by FC's amazing and rich FFB. And I think that's the main feature that drew many GTPers to Ferrari Challenge, and it's successor, Supercar Challenge. The incredibly detailed, and arguably over boosted FFB gave you the ability to feel the front wheels fighting for grip in the way no other racing game I ever played, before or since, has been able to do. Especially driving the older cars in the game, there was such an intense feeling of fighting for balance through transitional moves as the weight transferred from side to side or front to back under braking. In that sense, Eutechnyx created a masterpiece. By giving that extra feedback, Ferrari Challenge allowed you to drive by the seat of your pants, something that's missing from nearly every other game. And that's the point I was making in my earlier post about the lack of outside stimuli. But I don't think I ever claimed that FC had a superior physics engine compared to GT5 Prologue. However, one could make the case that it had an arguably better physics engine than any other racing game on the PS3 at the time, and as such, among other reasons, it filled a vaccum.
I'm not sure now what I said you said... uhm, yeah.
Peeking back, it doesn't look like I remarked on that point in regards your views.
And looking back at what I said about FC, it didn't feel exactly like Forza 2. Your points are right, and I'd add that the cars in FC had a tangible sense of weight to them, perhaps emphasized by the camera lurching forward when you brake. Since I was racing it with the DFGT, I did feel the tires quite well. In fact, better than the PC sims I had raced with the possible exception of LFS. But there was also this flavor of Forza in the game. Fishing through curves felt similar in both games, which is where you feel much of anything in a racing game.
One of my biggest issues with Prologue was how bland and stale the steering was. If you can honestly tell me, you can't tell the difference between the rich, lively, communicative FFB from GTR Evo and the stale, cold, lifeless FFB from Prologue, we're really speaking from opposite ends of the axis. To be fair, the cars in GTR were racing cars with very direct steering. Prologue was full of road cars with a lot of isolation. But it was more than that.
I'm not sure I'd call GTR Evo's feel rich and involving. Sure, it's a serious racing sim so it had better have something to commend it over a console racer. And to be sure, I have no experience with real race cars or supercars, mostly my Supra on Dunlops... I forget the rating, and a relative's Sentra Spec V, firm suspension on on Continentals. But when I decided on a few occasions to cut loose, both Prologue, and surprisingly GT4, were remarkably similar to my real life experience, even to the vague unnerving feeling when the car was on the verge of losing traction, as my Dunlops don't have a distinct break point. The sound of tire squeal was almost exactly the same. I use a DFGT, which is almost exactly the same in feel as my G25, so I reserve it for PC racing.
I can understand your gripes over PD's tire modeling, as this is the hardest nut for any game to crack. Just look at the ordeal the LFS guys have gone through. Look at GTR, which had a fix to the stock tire model done by a few people in the community who thought it was wrong, and most ended up agreeing. And I've never experienced a car on racing tires, obviously, so I can't comment on that. People like Scaff have made remarks about GT's tire physics, a guy who was actually in the biz for years, perhaps still is, and does point out a number of things PD gets right. But this is why debates like these in bars makes the beer tender happy, they never end.
iRacing was the last PC sim I tried. Because, like you, I don't much care for the pay to play method. And if you really go and buy ALL the content, it can become quite pricey. That said, if you'll pardon the pun, iRacing for me was a game changer. ...I found it to be superior in every way imaginable--from the community to the philosophy behind it, iRacing was a world apart from other PC sims. Is it perfect? No, far from it. And you can find flaws and faults with any game out there. But if you want pure wheel to wheel racing action, with other clean racers, in the most realistic, true to life way possible, it's the way to go.
Someday, I might change my mind, but I'm doubtful. I didn't buy a LFS license because the pure joy of the most realistic physics experience is just not my bag. And it's precisely because... let's go back to your remarks. It's a Quixotian quest, nothing is absolutely realistic, but real life, real world racing. Every game and our personal attachments to them is completely an individual matter. It's based VERY strongly on vague visceral/emotional impressions which just aren't discreet, quantitative or scientific. For a number of people, louder, more aggressive engine notes improve the physics and feel to them. And this probably explains my attachment to Gran Turismo, a game accused of sampling vacuum cleaners rather than cars.
Because it doesn't matter that much to me if the engines are so loud, they give me a headache after a while, like the first GTR did.
iRacing - actually I like that play on it, iPaying - may offer something outstanding. But I bet that mostly it's a matter of feeling like you're in a real NASCAR or SCCA race with other blokes who have been in the racing world for years, and you get a thrill of moving up one position on a leaderboard as you improve.
That's fine, but that's not my thing. Gran Turismo spoiled me. It not only gave me the ability to race in more types of racing outside of Toca, it also gave me the virtual ability to own hundreds of millions of dollars worth of cars. And in GT5, it's really very close to reality, at least in regard the more mortal level of cars in the range of Corvettes and below. Above that barometric is entirely up to debate and the downing of lots of beverage. But let me tell you, my modded BMW 330i is amazingly similar in feel to my GTR Evo Beemer which I feel no love for whatsoever, because it's not my car, it's someone else's. And because GTR graphics are as PS2 as it gets. It's very dry and clinical, like comparing the taste of cough syrup to Guinness.
Anyhow, this is making me miss GT5, gotta get in some racing before I waste a lot of time pouring over stuff in Forza 3!
so it's difficult for me to tell the difference, BUT... 
Finally the special events are all gold, Platinum here I go 
