I have a love/hate relationship with Virginia International Raceway. On the one hand, it’s a beautiful facility with multiple track layout options, and all of them are challenging. On the other hand, I’ve never been very good there. I guess that’s more of a me thing than a VIR thing.
We’ll be using the full course track layout. It’s fast, with long straights and challenging corners. The Honda Civic Type R is fun to drive there, but the other, higher horsepower, cars chew it up on the straights. My only hope of doing well at VIR is to make my passes in the turns, and then hope that I can hold them off on the long straights. It’s an easy plan to make, much tougher to execute.
With only six races remaining in the season, I have to admit that I’m a little disappointed in the way things have gone. I had hoped for a more realistic racing experience. Part of that is on me. I started the season with the Drivatar difficulty set to “average.” With me being new to Forza, I thought it would make the racing interesting and realistic. I was wrong. A few races into the season, I increased the difficulty to “highly skilled.” This setting was better, but at most tracks, it still wasn’t enough. For next season, I need to consider setting the drivatar difficulty at “Unbeatable” (which is a misnomer). I’ll experiment with it first to see how it works.
Another problem (which I’ve mentioned before) is that Forza encourages aggressive driving. Some of my fastest laps occurred when I was completely out of control, missing my marks, even going off course. Of course, that doesn’t happen in real life, but you’re rewarded for overdriving in Forza. I usually try not to give into the urge, but I admit I have gone over to the dark side more than once to make a pass or set a fast lap.
Six races to go, all at tracks I’m familiar with. This should be fun.
