Handicap races

I was playing with a friend last night. He just bought the game while I have been playing it since launch, so while both of us played previous Forza titles before, I had an advantage.

The first few times we were racing with cars with he same PI and it was very much like hot lapping, as we were so far apart. Then we stared balancing things out by me choosing cars with a lower PI. Finally we found the right combination (stock Audi RS 5 vs. stock R8 5.2 FSI if someone cares) and had some epic fun. It was still not ideal, though, as we did not have the close quarter races we were looking for - he pulled away from me in straights and then I caught up to him in corners.

This made me wish I could come up with a set of cars/tunes that are designed for handicap races. How would you go about creating this?

I was thinking that the main difference between an experienced and a novice is the cornering ability, so I would create cars that have about the same top speed, acceleration and launch and put most of the handicap in handling. I would also put a little handicap into braking so that the novice (most likely on ABS) can start braking at the same braking point than the more experienced player.

Any thoughts?

start making a list of all your lap times. then have them run a few laps, you get to use the car that had the closest lap time. there will never be a set list of this car vs that car because we all have different handicaps. or you could set up a private lobby and give him a head start of what ever you wont the last race by. if he wins he loses some of his head start, if he still loses he gets a little more head start.

as mentioned above, you can only handicap yourself really.

I tend to run oddball cars in a lobby handicapping myself to make the racing closer with other random players. I have my faster cars but there isnt a need to use them most of the time.

If you’re in a private lobby put the slower guys on a color team (like blue), and then put the faster guys on another color based team that isn’t blue. For the faster guys, set a negative power restriction (like -5%) and a virtual restrictor plate is added to all of the fastest guys’ cars.

Ive done a championship with these rules and it really balanced everything out. It’ll be trial and error though if different cars and tunes are used to get a good balance.

Note that this was in FM4 and I’m pretty sure it can be done in this game.

Yes, this can be done in FM5 too.

Power restriction will, of course, get you back to pulling away on straights and catching in the corners. I have played with these settings a lot in FM4.

The restrictions can be changed ONLY in increments/decrements(?) of 5. So 100% power, 95%, 90%, 85%, etc. For power, this is sufficient. But for GRIP, it is also 100% grip, 95%, 90%, etc. which is far more significant AND represents a huge difference. One can still be competitive at 90% power or even below but 90% grip is very difficult to make up. I really wish GRIP can be 100%, 99%, 98%, etc.

So I think the balance between power and grip is needed to even it out. My recommendation is 95% on GRIP as starting point then use POWER for fine tuning; usually 90% works well. For a good driver, 90% power does not affect the lap times dramatically (some even go faster due to reduced wheel spins).

I had no idea this feature existed, thanks! I will try it out the next time.

The easiest way would be to run the same car with the same build except that if he was running race tires maybe you would run street or sport and fine tune differences with tire width