Well, I have been asked by a few people to post something along these lines. Make no mistake, I’m far from an expert at this game and what follows is my story and just what worked for me. Truth is, I’m still a newb that has a lot to learn yet. The point of this??? Well, I got a lot of help from the people on this forum and if this post can help a total newb or two out, then its my way of giving back. Its long, so don’t say I didn’t warn you 
I bought the game on New Year’s Eve of 2013. I’m not a gamer at all, but thought this game looked so cool in the commercials running during the holidays. I just had to have it. When I ran my first race, I was dreadful. Really, I literally could not have been any worse than I was. I couldn’t keep the car on the road at all. I would spin out terribly on every turn. I remember thinking to myself what a waste of money… It wasn’t just the game, it was the money for the console too as I only bought it to play Forza. So, I figured since I dropped $560 on it, I might as well try to get some fun out of it. I was totally impressed with the level of detail in the game. Considering that the last game I owned prior to this was Space Invaders on an old Atari 2600, I was blown away by this. I figured I’d just enjoy seeing all the cars and take in the sounds as it was all so cool to me. I ran the career races and started out with every assist on.
After about 20 hours of playing the game that way, I realized that the assisted braking was incredibly stupid. So I turned that off. That was the first step to me improving. Looking back, it was actually a huge step in the right direction. I’d still be dreadful today if I hadn’t turned it off. I ran about ten races and realized the assisted steering was causing my car to do all kinds of crazy things. It would go to places where I didn’t want it to go and when it made adjustments that I tried to fight through, the car would just spin. I’m talking in the middle of straight aways. So that was gone quickly after the braking assist. The two of them, IMO, cause way more harm than good. You get zero benefit to leaving either of them on if you want to ever be any good at this game.
I kept running the career races. I would have the occasional lap that wasn’t hideous, but most still were. Looking back, it was mostly me struggling with learning how to make fine adjustments with the controller. This was something entirely new to me afterall. So I just kept at it. I would run the races, rewind after every mistake, and was basically just plodding along getting nowhere. So, I figured I have always been a fan of forums (Hockey mostly), so why not see if there is a Forza Forum. Sure enough, I found this place. I waited a while to start annoying everyone here with my constant barrage of questions. I was the proverbial fly on the wall and just read and read and read. A lot of what I read just went right over my head because I was so bad at the game though. One theme that kept popping up over and over though was turn the assists off. I kept thinking, “why in the world would I do that, this game is crazy hard as it is, it must be impossible with them off.”
I was trying to drive Audi R8s (my favorite car) in the beginning. So when I tried to turn off TCS and STM, I became much much worse at the game. I never bothered much with D class up until this point. I just thought it was boring. I wanted to drive the Lotus E21 and cars like that. Fortunately, I realized that I pretty much suck at gaming and I need to start at the bottom. So, off to D class I went. I hadn’t figured out what Rivals was yet, so I went to free play. One of the cars that I bought during the career races that I really liked was the 71 Skyline. It was prone to spinout with the way it was though. So, I figured if I stripped away anything I could that would make the car powerful and just concentrate on handling, I might enjoy driving it. That helped a lot, but I was still really bad and had a hard time controlling the car. So I got the brilliant idea of taking the slowest car in the game and just learning how to drive it. I bought a stock 63 Beetle and drove it without any upgrades. I was immediately faster in that car than I was in the Skyline because I could keep it on the road all the time. I ended up adding every handling upgrade to it that I could. Then I turned off TCS and STM. All of a sudden, I could get around the track with little to no sliding. Sure, the car was ridiculously slow, but it made me realize that handling can be far more important than power. So I tuned both the Beetle and the Skyline to D400, but maxed out the handling before I added anything else to them. I now had two cars that I actually enjoyed driving. Back to free play I went and won a lot of races. I started getting a chip on my shoulder thinking I was getting good.
I was reading the forums one night and kept seeing people talking about hotlapping. I didn’t want to look like the dunce I was and ask what they were talking about, so I went looking for it on my own and found Rivals for the first time. Yes, I do miss quite a few of the obvious things, I’m not embarrassed by it at all. So I started to run Rivals. Just picked the first track (Alps Festival) and went at it with my Skyline since it was the faster of the two cars. After my first session, the game told me I was ranked something like 583,000 in the world. Well, there went that chip that was emerging on my shoulder. I was back to realizing that I sucked again. So I started to ask questions here. That’s when I realized what a clean lap was and how the rankings were based on them. I tried to run a clean lap, but it just wasn’t happening. So I decided that I was going to be slow, very slow in fact, but clean. I think my first clean lap around the Alps was something like 6:30. I couldn’t believe it when the game told me I was now ranked at roughly 200,000 instead of 500,000. From that point on, all I cared about was running clean laps. I went and ran every track in D class until I had a clean lap on each track. Even got a few of them under 100,000. I kept running laps over and over and over. Just trying to better my times. I made some improvements, but nothing substantial. What I did accomplish though was I learned the tracks rather well.
I came back to the Forum and went into the tuner’s lounge for the first time. Up until this point, I really had only done builds and kept all the tuning settings at stock. I opened a thread by gtFOOTw about his open source tunes. “What’s an open source tune”, I kept asking myself. Sure enough, as fate would have it, the first car in his post was the 65 Mini. Complete with build, tune and even some lap times. I wrote it all down and went straight to the game and built that car. All I could say was WOW! I actually now had a car that handled the way its supposed to. I started improving my times up in the 10,000 range instead of the 100,000 range. I remember thinking how much I hated the Mini. It was such a whimpy looking little thing. I kept saying I wouldn’t be caught dead in a car like that in real life. So I tried building other cars that would be better. I hadn’t even noticed that the Mini was the dominate car on the leaderboards yet because I never even looked at them. I learned how to race against my own ghost and would use the Mini as my measuring stick. I would build a car and run it against my ghost until I beat the darn Mini. Once I would beat it, I would run the Mini again to see if I could do even better with it. To this day, my best times on almost every track in D class are still with the Mini. Everytime I built a car that would beat it, the Mini would then beat the new car and frequently with ease. It was my driving that was getting better though, not the cars.
So, I decided to just stick with the Mini and see how far I could get on the leaderboards. I barely broke into the top 1,500 on Alps Festival and couldn’t believe it. Yet, I had reached a point where I wasn’t getting any better. So I asked about it here. The same response kept coming back at me that the Mini was not the right car for the Alps track. I didn’t want to drive anything else though. So why not change the Mini? That’s when I started to fool around with tuning on my own. I took Foot’s tune and altered it. I built lots of versions. Some that were far more powerful. Some that were heavier, lighter, with Turbo, etc… I went and took each setting and adjusted them and noticed the differences they all made. After doing this for a about a week or so, I decided to build my own Mini and do the tune without using Foot’s numbers. I ended up with a car that had more power and was better suited to the Alps track that I had become obsessed with at this point. I got that car into the 900’s on the leaderboards. I made a post about it here and Don Ente gave me the best help I could have ever gotten from the forum. He downloaded my tune and drove it on the Alps so I couldn race against his ghost and learn from it. He even used Auto and ABS too even though he is more than capable of driving it without them. It was great because it was an apples to apples comparison. I chased him for weeks and never did catch him. I did end up somewhere in the 700’s though.
I decided to just focus on the Alps tracks only, but wanted to try other classes. So in C class, I downloaded a tune from Pit Exton (he is now oo 3x oo) for a C class mini. I loved the car way more than my D class version. I drove that thing a ridiculous amount of laps. I got to about 700 on the C class leaderboard as well. That seemed to be my limit with that car on that track. I then moved on to B class. Of course, the first thing I did was build the Mini up for B class. It was terrible. A car that worked so well in D and C classes was a joke in B class. That’s when I really looked at the leaderboards for the first time. I was amazed at how many of the top spots were held by the Mercedes 190E on the B class Alps LB. So, off I went to building another car.
I made it to around 700 again. I wanted to be better than that though. So I became very focused and so intense that I was actually hurting my hands because of the grip I had on the controller. That’s when the Neanderthal in me finally had a break through. I was so close to beating my time one night and just kept missing it. I kept trying harder and harder and harder. Finally, on one lap, I really screwed the first turn up bad. I was a good bit behind my ghost and realized I had no shot of catching it on that lap. So, I figured I’d just relax and make the most of that lap. Hoping to at least nail the rest of the course… Sure enough, I ended up sailing right past my ghost coming out of the tunnel. I made the next few turns very well and cruised across the line a full 3 seconds faster than my previous time. I was in the low 300’s. I didn’t belong that high on a leaderboard, but I was all geeked up about it. The next day, I made a promise to myself to stay relaxed and not get all white knuckled. I kept beating my time over and over. I kept racing the ghosts of any name ahead of me on the leaderboard that I recognized from here. I was jumping up about 20 or so spots each time I ran it. I was relaxing, but I was also learning from watching the better players too. I made it up to somewhere in the 170’s. A name that I saw next was Clay In LA. That’s when I hit the wall with that car. I couldn’t get any further and never did beat Clay. I decided it was time to get away from the Alps and apply my new “relaxed” style of driving to other tracks. I’ve never bothered going back to the Alps with any real intentions and I’m sure my time has dropped on the leaderboard substantially by now. I might have bettered it in a lobby or two and I wouldn’t even know, I don’t care for those tracks at all now.
I went back to the Mini in C class and started running it on Laguna, Catalunya, Buggatti, etc. I was doing ok, but nothing great. Then I got myself involved in a discussion here that I really had no business being part of. I made a comment to Worm that I probably should have kept to myself. He responded by insulting my lack of top 500 times on Forzastats. He said I only had 9. I had never been to that site and was actually really happy to hear that I had that many. I would have never guessed it. Well, the juvenile in me that likes to rear its ugly head every so often then became really mad about what Worm said to me. I decided I was going back to the beginning (D Class) and was going to run a top 500 on every track except for the Oval because I can’t stomach that track. So I hopped in the mini and off I went. I was pretty determined and got all but 2 tracks within a few days. Silvertsone International and Prague Short. I still don’t have top 500 times there even now in D class. My little temper tantrum was over and I went back to just enjoying the game and the forum.
I was making quite a few friends here and started to race with them in private lobbies. I couldn’t beat the better ones (like GRD 4 3L) I was racing with, but I was doing pretty good against a fair amount of them. My friends list kept getting longer and anytime I added someone I knew that was much better than me, I couldn’t wait to race against them. I kept pushing myself to get closer and closer to them. I realized I wasn’t going to compete with them while I was still driving an Automatic. So, I went to Manual. I have issues with my hands that make it tough for me to use the clutch, so it was just manual only. Once I made the change, I was noticeably faster. I could now keep up much better. Even started to win some races. Later, I switched to the clutch and that helped even more. I dropped ABS about three weeks ago and have amassed over 10,000 hardcore points and a #190 ranking on Forzastats since then.
I continued to run rivals whenever I wasn’t racing in lobbies. I kept moving up little by little on the leaderboards. Then one day I decided to run the short Top Gear tracks as I never bothered with them before. I had just made friends with Pit Exton and decided I was going to run against his ghost. The first several laps were ugly. He’s pretty darn good and it became obvious that I had no prayer of beating him. So I just focused on getting as close to him as I could. Seemed like each lap I got a little closer and the time was green on every lap. After about 50 laps (they were only 30+ second laps), I gave up. I had no idea what to expect from my ranking as I was still a good bit behind him. It said I was ranked #76 though. After I picked my jaw up off the floor, I became pretty darn happy about it and did everything I could to annoy as many people here that would listen to me
Since then, I’ve been on a quest to constantly improve my ranking wherever I can. At the moment, I have two #14’s , two #15’s and a #20. All the while I still race against really good drivers anytime I can. I have a friends list that is pretty daunting. I’m ranked #14 on Yas Marina Full in D class and I’m only 5th on my friends list. Racing against those that are much better than me has been the biggest thing that has improved my driving. I owe them all a big thanks. GRD, Worded, Varmint, Swerve, etc. I’m not done yet and plan on getting much better still. My next short term goal is to get a top ten and then a #1. I’ve reached the point where the people I’m competing with are not only much better than me, but also far more experienced too. That isn’t going to deter me at all though.
So, if you’re a newb, and you’ve made it to the end of this ridiculously long post, don’t give up or get frustrated. Keep trying to make small improvements and be patient. Keep racing those that are better than you. Learn from them as much as you can. Watch what they do and try to duplicate it. You’ll get much better at this game as a result. Enough so that you might even surprise yourself.