Rear View Mirror 7/16/12

Welcome to this week’s Rear View Mirror, where we take a look back on what happened in the world of racing and the world of Forza Motorsport. Some race series took a break this week, but for those that were held, the action was plentiful.

NASCAR LENOX Industrial Tools 301 at New Hampshire Motor Speedway 

New Hampshire leads the United States when it comes to picking presidential candidates. Sunday’s race in the “Live Free or Die” state all but secured a spot in the Chase for winner Kasey Kahne. As with a presidential primary, this does not guarantee a victory at the end of the line, but it does make a statement, and is of course a worthy accomplishment.

Like a politician who is rising in the polls, Denny Hamlin blazed through the pack and nearly stole the lead from Kahne, only to run out of time before catching him. Had it not been for a slight miscommunication in pit strategy, Hamlin would have been out front the entire race. A hard-fought second was well deserved.

Kahne is 12^th in the standings and this victory—his second—gives him a definitive advantage in the Chase, which is determined by the top 11-20 drivers with the most victories. Kahne now has two. Dale Earnhardt Jr., who placed fourth following Clint Boyer, is now only 16 points behind Sprint Cup Series leader Matt Kenseth, who ended the race outside the top ten.

Check out the NASCAR site for the full results and mountains of stories about Sunday’s race.

Who are your favorites going into the final series? Talk about it in the RVM thread.

DTM Munich 

This weekend at Munich’s Olympic stadium Audi, Mercedes and BMW battled in a format similar to the speed courses of monster truck racing—albeit without the car crushing. Drivers competed one-on-one in a tight time trials course that included pit stops, some forced drifting, a rain soaked track, and pyrotechnics. DTM fans who attended were blown away by a true test of driver ability, where the slightest mistakes lead to a damaged car and quick defeat.

Check out the DTM site for a more thorough explanation of how this tournament-style event produced winners. Saturday’s bracket pitted teams against one another and Sunday was all about the individual driver.

Saturday saw Mercedes utterly dominate the top three spots. In the individual tournament, it was Mattias Ekstrom in the Red Bull Audi A5, edging out Jamie Green in the Mercedes AMG C-Coupe.

Check out this video that captures how it went down. What a show for the fans!

A community time-trial event like this would make for some excellent play in Forza 4. If anyone thinks they could set one up, tell us about it in the RVM thread.

Formula Drift—Throwdown—Evergreen Speedway this coming weekend 

ForzaMotorsport.net will be attending the Formula Drift event this weekend in nearby Monroe, WA. We will be photographing cars, picking up video, interviewing the right people, and looking forward to sharing our experience. I can’t wait!

Evergreen Speedway is the oldest track on the Formula Drift circuit and the Pacific NW has some of the most die-hard drift fans in the country. Check out the Formula Drift site for details on event times.

The Cars of Comicon 

It wasn’t just sweaty nerds and cosplay fans at Comic-Con 2012; Forza Horizon was there both in the Xbox booth in the Hard Rock San Diego Hotel and at the Spike TV booth at the San Diego Convention Center . Lots of Forza fans came by to check out the game—the same version that was at E3—and to pick up cool Forza Horizon swag.

There were some cool cars there, as you see featured throughout this week’s RVM. Check out our official Twitter feed to see all the cool pics we caught.

ALMS---Viper GTS-R Returns to the American Le Mans series 

Soon an SRT Viper GTS-R will be returning to the ALMS to battle for the hearts of American muscle-driven GT Class fans. This marks the return of the Viper after almost a decade of being away from the American Le Mans Series.

Sporting a glorious Forza Motorsport livery and driven by such heralded road pilots as Dominik Farnbacher(who established a new Nürburgring production car lap record in a Viper) and Belgium’s Marc Goosens, Kuno Wittmer of Canada, and IndyCar’s Ryan Hunter-Reay in the longer endurance races. Last night on SPEED, Tommy Kendall of SCCA Trans Am-series fame announced that he will also join the team. Those drivers and the pre-eminent awesomeness of the Viper GTS-R are sure to make for some exciting racing.

Check out this clip of the new Viper GTS-R in action.

Featured Club--Mod Monsters 

What interested me about these guys is, they customize their cars in the real world as well as the world of Forza which fits into the Rear View Mirror concept nicely. With that in mind I give you Mod Monsters club co–founder MiniHulk85B:

“Mod Monsters was formed by 3 best friends, whose love for cars drew them together. We at Mod Monsters like any vehicle that has been modified for styling or performance or even both. We do love seeing a vehicle modified that most people wouldn't even think of. To make all Mod Monsters projects even more unique we give them Project Names. Here are the 4 cars currently being Mod Monster'd in the UK. 

• 1998 Alfa Romeo 156 2.5 V6 - Project Beast
• 1994 BMW 320i Coupe - Project Bavarian Growler
• 1998 Nissan Primera P11 1.6L SX - Project Silver Samurai
• 1998 SAAB 900s Coupe - Project Swedish Klix

From the outset I decided that Mod Monsters needed to stand out from the crowd and one of the ways I did that was personally not to use so-called leaderboard cars.

On Forza Motorsport 4 I asked my Co-Leaders (Jeff Harley, MTheSarge and slewfoot2) what would be the best type of things to do with our club and from very early on, we decided that regular Endurance Races held for fun between club members was the way to go. We have a good bunch of people in our club who are always willing to help out with, paints, tunes or even ideas for cars.

If anyone would like to find out more about what we do in real life or on Forza Motorsport 4 don't be afraid to ask. We are always looking for new people to race with and have a discussion about the main reason we play Forza Motorsport 4 and do what we do in the real world.”

Here is a link to their YouTube channel if you want to know more about them. 

VM Virtual Motorsports 

On July 17 Virtual Motorsports turns one year old, so congratulations to everyone at VM especially Hellbringer and Chilledheat, who are the "main dudes” and sends me my weekly updates from which this segment is produced. A milestone for sure! 

Now, on to the weekly update of what’s happening at VM.

Classics Series 2

Classic racing machines of yester-year have been competing for the title of champion and the final battle took place at the famed Nürburgring Nordschleife or “Green Hell.” There were only 20 minutes allowed for qualifying which meant there would be no more than two laps achievable. American driver #418 F1415182235 in his Honda NSX-R nailed the top time of 8:14.802. He went on to win the race as well.

The Driver’s Championship was taken by #321 VVV Axiom in a Lamborghini Muira P400 who also took the Privateer’s Championship and the Rookie Championship, a Forza hat-trick, nothing less than amazing Axiom, well done, Sir! The Teams Championship was conquered by Team F4H North America. A hearty congratulations to all of you who participated, and a Forza pat on the back to the winners.

For the full VM story, check out their newsletter.

VM Knockout Tournament

Using a variety of random cars with equally random PI drivers will compete against one another. The goal is to test their skills in building the best car possible and working to stay alive in the tournament.

Turn 10 is in part sponsoring the event with unicorns and credit prizes. Sign up now to get involved.

Read the VM article for more details.

Here is their latest video covering the Stock Hatch Series 2:

TORA The Online Racing Association 

The Online Racing Association sets up, manages and supports a several online racing series for Forza racers. The have a complete website detailing their events and they often have amazing prizes to series winners.

TORA GT Season 9 Opener

In what could was the first of a series of races that will result in the winner receiving a full race rig from TORA’s sponsor GT Omega Racing, TPR B0x showed his provincial racing acumen by qualifying a full half second faster that the field and dominating the top race lobby. The rest of the 140 track masters competed against similarly timed racers at Silverstone.

Next week’s race will be conducted at Hockenheim.

Here is TORA’s coverage of Round one:

Gumball 3000 Design Contest 

Forza Community member Dragon Arts is a renowned painter and photographer. He is also a huge fan of the Gumball 3000. So he created “official” GUM BALL logos and shared them with a few friends hoping they would create their own Gumball 3000 cars. His thread now has over 60 painters displaying over 100 cars with their own number and a different spin on the Gumball theme.

The deadline for entry was July 15, so all the entries are in. Why not go take a peek at what they have created.

While judging is up to Dragon Arts and his staff of hundreds, I would love to hear what your personal favorites are and why in the RVM thread.

GWD Wednesday 2-4 Pacific 

Yo, yo, yo, it’s time to get it on with the Turn 10 community team! No not that way silly, get your head out of the gutter and onto the track. We will be racing online ready to “give’r Billy,” chat it up and give out unicorns like they are going out of style. Which they of course never do.

So get out your best racing gloves, toss on your headsets and come show us what you got this Wednesday 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. Pacific time. I guarantee we will raise a ruckus worthy of your participation.

Go to the official ForzaMotorsport Facebook page to engage us, and then fire up the old 360 and find our rooms in the race lobby. See ya there!   

Wisconsin and Bugatti…Really? 

I visited my homeland of Wisconsin this weekend for a class reunion and family visit. This picture is from the warehouses my dad use to operate his business through. Years ago a guy started a Bugatti restoration business in one of them. Not the Bugatti’s of today, but the monstrous long nosed and huge wheeled beasts of the 1930’s. These cars are extremely rare and immensely valuable; being around a shop that restored them was a treat to say the least. Initially when the guy painted the Bugatti sign over the old “Workplace safety is your business” sign, I was upset, but now, 30 years later, it has aged and adds its own unique character to these historic buildings originally built to service boxcars of the booming railways of Wisconsin in the early 1900’s. 

Thanks for reading, we appreciate your patronage. Post your comments in the RVM thread.