Gaming & Culture —

Cup cars vs the world: Forza’s new expansion is a brave move for NASCAR

It might be light on realism, but that doesn't mean it's not a lot of fun.

2016 has been a bit of a bumper year for Turn 10. Forza Motorsport 6 has been ported to Windows 10, and the Xbox One version has had not one but two expansion packs—first the return of Porsche and more recently an official NASCAR license. Stock cars have appeared in previous installments of the franchise (last seen in Forza 4), but the $20 (£16) NASCAR expansion puts these 3,300lb (1.497kg) 700hp+ monsters front and center.

Turn 10 also pushed out a fairly significant update to Forza 6 alongside (but independently of) the NASCAR expansion, adding some tweaks to the game that players will benefit from even if they don't want to buy the stock cars. Drafting in the slipstream of another car has been tweaked. When you're racing in a pack, the HUD now has little proximity arrows that let you know someone is in a blind spot. You can configure games to include mandatory pit stops and also rolling starts (as opposed to taking off from a standstill).

As for those NASCAR Cup cars, arguably this is a brave move. The new career campaign transplants these specialized oval racing machines onto race circuits from around the world, pitting them head-to-head against more conventional Forza fodder (sports cars like the Audi R8 LMS, Ferrari 458 GTE, and McLaren 12C GT3, which race at Le Mans and the like). The sport has a well-deserved reputation for extremely careful control of its image, hence my surprise at their willingness to enter into such a direct comparison with other flavors of racing. It's the automotive equivalent of firing up Madden and then facing off against Manchester United or the New Zealand All Blacks.

Brave or not, it's probably also a smart move. That's a view shared by Declan Brennan, strategic branding & PR director for CJ Wilson Racing. (Brennan also spent a decade working in the gaming industry, making him particularly well qualified to comment on the topic.) "Motorsport's problem is that it's struggling to develop the next generation of fans," Brennan told Ars. This move by NASCAR puts its product where the eyeballs are.

As we've previously reported, CJ Wilson Racing is trying something similar—albeit on a much smaller scale—with an e-sports series also run in Forza 6. "Ultimately we have a huge number of people out there who are of car buying age who are fans of racing games but not racing," Brennan said. "This is about creating a connection. We're using the Cayman Cup e-sports series as a proof of concept. We're delighted with it, our OEM partners are delighted with it, and we can build on this experience with our partners in the future to be much, much bigger."

After spending a good few hours with the NASCAR expansion, I came away rather impressed despite not being much of a fan of stock car racing. The oval races are tremendous fun. And with the revised drafting physics, you can even bump-draft your way into the lead. There's also a certain lunacy involved in trying to hustle a digital version of Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s ride around the Nürburgring, equipped with just four gears.

We do wish that Turn 10 had dug into NASCAR's back catalog for the expansion, chucking in some trucks or older stock cars to go with the current machinery, which are all damn-near identical bar the engines and paint jobs.

I'm a little skeptical that what we're getting is a particularly faithful simulation, though. For one thing, cars that race on ovals—be they NASCAR stock cars or open-wheel IndyCars—are set up with different suspension settings left-to-right to cope with the banked turns, something that Forza doesn't support. And there's no provision for yellow flags or cautions, which are as integral to NASCAR as time outs are to the NFL.

Then there's that business of taking big heavy stock cars and racing them against Le Mans-honed exotica on road courses. As anyone familiar with Forza will know, the game assigns a performance index (PI) to each car, so according to the game's engine, the match ups are theoretically fair. In real life, though, I'm not convinced a stock car would be at all competitive against high-downforce cars on tracks that have both left and right turns. Sam Collins, deputy editor at Racecar Engineering (and noted stock car aficionado) agrees, and he pointed out that Cup cars can be somewhat deficient when it comes to cornering.

At this point, I ought to note there is in fact historical precedent on Forza's side. Back in 1976, the organizers of the 24 Hours of Le Mans race invited a pair of NASCAR stock cars—a Ford Torino and Dodge Charger—to take part in the race. The big American V8s were popular with the crowd, but, perhaps predictably, they didn't do that well. The Charger's engine expired on lap 2, and the Ford lasted until just under halfway through the race.

In that light, perhaps this is more fodder for the "console racing games are too arcade-like" crowd. But despite this technical inaccuracy, at the end of the day the results are fun. Fun is why we play video games, isn't it?

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Channel Ars Technica