Welcome to this week’s Rear View Mirror, get your fix of racing highlights and find out what is going on in the world of Forza. This week is a little shorter than usual but nonetheless packed full of race details, commentary, and even some Forza tips, so let's get to it!

Formula 1 – Grand Prix of Singapore 

As I watched the Grand Prix of Singapore I felt somewhat transported to the world of Ridley Scott’s "Blade Runner." The race track was lit by some 16 million megawatts of lighting and the highways of the global mega-city were high above. It was truly a spectacle and I am glad to hear the FIA has signed up for five more years.

The tight turns and concrete walls of the Singapore course made for unusual racing compared to the open expanses of the last race at Monza. Lewis Hamilton and his McLaren found a groove and qualified at pole.That groove continued with the first 22 laps where Hamilton dominated until his gearbox gave out and he coasted to a stop. This retirement moved him from poised to take first in the Driver’s Championship to fourth overall.

Sebastian Vettel slid into first and held it, Jensen Button in his McLaren took second, and Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso worked hard to achieve third.

For more of what transpired in this exciting Grand Prix, including Michael Schumacher’s latest trouble. Read the Formula One site. And take a look at this highlight video that showcases this amazing event:

NASCAR--Sylvania 300 at New Hampshire Motor Speedway 

Running out of fuel last week at Chicagoland must have turned the screws for Denny Hamlin. After that incident he professed via Twitter that he would win the following week. Call Hamlin cocky if you want, but to quote Kid Rock, “It ain't braggin’ if you back it up.” Hamlin, after starting deep in the grid (32^nd), blew past everyone in an obviously superior car and won by nearly three seconds. This was the one hundredth win for the Joe Gibb’s Racing team.

Jimmie Johnson took second place, which moves him to the lead in the Chase standings. After starting at pole Jeff Gordon eked out a third-place finish, which keeps him in distant contention for the championship at twelfth overall. 

Hamlin’s win puts him in third in the Chase standings behind Brad Keselowski, who finished sixth and holds second in the Chase standings.

Here is some footage of the Hamlin victory:

FIA Sonoma WTCC-USTCC 

If you didn’t get a chance to check out the World Touring Car Championships at Sonoma (Infineon) Raceway, you missed a lot of excitement. RVM is here with a little highlight video for you.

The USTCC GT class has some very exciting racing as well. Coming in October we will have an opportunity to get to know a multi-year champion. Can anyone guess who I am referring to? Here’s a hint. His car is on the left in the picture below and he took second in his class this on Saturday and won on Sunday at Sonoma.

USTCC Podium cars at Sonoma 2012

Worms Tuning Tip 

Welcome to the latest feature in Rear View Mirror, “Worm’s Tuning Tips.” Here Forza veteran and tuner extraordinaire VVV Worm will pass on bits of tuning knowledge. Worm knows more about tuning in Forza than just about anyone, and he makes it sound easy and logical. If you remember the first couple RVM columns, I pointed to Worm’s Tuning Guide. Here is this week’s tip:

“The cars build is more important than the tune. A well-thought out build can shave seconds off a tune. Make sure your stats on the car match up to what you may already have that is good in that class. A good rule of thumb in B500 is that you need to get your horsepower and weight to match up first then add grip or power depending on the track you are running. For example, if the car weighs 2,700 lbs. you need it to have 270 hp. If the car weighs 1,800 lbs. it's best to have 180 hp” 

Design Primos 180x 

There’s still time to battle with professional drift driver Rob Primo in this month’s Rivals event “Primo Drift.” As this awesome opportunity comes to a close, Rob busted out with his backup car for a second design contest. Check out the Design Primo’s 180SX thread here. And check out all the awesome designs, tunes and posts in the race to beat Primo at Indy in the original Primo Drifter thread.

Congratulations to the winners of the Design Primo’s 180SX contest:

First – ISI IAI IMI 

Second – HeartlessHorror 

Third – Sadioki 

 Over the weekend, Forza fans got a double dose of awesome at the Britcar 24 Hours of Silverstone. In addition to enjoying great endurance racing at one of the world’s premier circuits, fans got a chance to check out Forza Horizon for the first time. Our man in the UK Ian Webster was on-hand for all the action. TORA was there working with us. Check out their site to see early pictures--including shots of the Forza Horizon BMW that competed in the race. Look for full coverage of this amazing event and how race fans enjoyed an opportunity to play Forza Horizon in the Rogue Motorsport garage in this Friday’s edition of the Week In Review.

There was great racing this week at Virtual Motorsports. They offer some of the best in organized online racing and literally something for everyone. Check out their weekly newsletter and this week’s promotional video.

Club Feature-- Team APEX 

This week we have a drift team from the Netherlands. Forza community member RobRSV had this to say about their club. (Actually he had much more to say. For the full club description and quotes from each member check out this forum post I created.) Here’s Rob:

“What we do as a team is obviously doing Drift Leaderboards, having our own user created lobby 'Drift with Team APEX' that we like to do once in a while, meet all kind of guys from the drifting community, even if we are freezing our XBOX's multiple times. We are also doing tandems, making drift videos, but we're doing races and having a laugh on Tag Virus as well.

Our main point in our team is having nice people, I think that's the reason why we are so long together. A great thing is that we have a lot of nationalities in our team, American, Australian, Canadian, Dutch, English, Irish, Northern-Irish, Scottish and Swedish. So our parties are sometimes pretty crazy with like 4 languages in it! Since we are so close together we actually have plans to meet in real life!

Our biggest accomplishment is of course being Number 1 on the Drift Team Leaderboards! We are really proud of it, and it's kind of demotivating to be overtaken by hackers :P We worked really hard for that! We love to be special and do all kinds of crazy stuff, videos and cars on the Leaderboards. If you are curious how many perfect drift scores I have: 32.000! If you want to see our videos, they are all being uploaded to our team leader's Storefront: RelentlessShine. 

One of us sorted out a HD Capture Card, so we will be hitting up YouTube very soon!”

 Here are a couple videos from Team APEX the first is some killer drifting through traffic:

This one has some great tandem drifting going on.

If you would like to comment on the content in Rear View Mirror or guess about who the USTCC driver to be featured in Heavy Metal Affliction is, do so in the RVM thread.

That’s it for today folks! See you in Heavy Metal Affliction on Thursday!