Pros:
** Handling model is a bit easier to "race" with, but not oversimplified. I solo-spun a few times when getting too aggressive last night online.
** You can get a car in front of you loose by getting too close to his rear decklid.
** Your line will genuinely change during a longer race. I was within 1 tenth per lap of a guy chasing me last night in a race. 10 laps later, I had found a lower in, "diamond" cut through the corner picked up speed because the low groove had gotten sloppy. I ran away from him in the last 5 or 6 laps to the tune of almost half a second a lap.
** You can beat and bang, even online. This helps with the areas where you need to get a nose under somebody or tuck up RIGHT BEHIND him to get the pass. In NR2003, you're too afraid of spinning the guy out with the slightest lag hiccup. Not so here. I actually had a guy use the chrome horn at Milwaukee and make the pass, but it didn't feel cheap or dirty. You can get your car a little dented in ARCA and not be guaranteed to wreck.
** Races with up to 38 guys last night were smooth. The draft at 'Dega is easily as good as NR2003. I picked up a tow car when we left the pits, and we were 13th-14th. We picked off cars one by one who tried to pass and run double-file and we finished 4th-5th. Fantastic modeling of the draft.
** Something silly, but leaving your garage is very cool, since at all of the tracks, you're parked at the hauler. You have to drive through the infield to reach the track. I know most rFactor mods do this, but it's still cool
** Online setup sharing (another rFactor bonus). If a guy is fast in a room, you can ask him for the setup. If he's not a complete d*ck, he can send you the file instantly in-game. It happened a lot for people in the room last night that I saw.
** The community, overall, is staggeringly well-mannered. I ran for probably about 5 or 6 hours last night and was only really cornhole-wrecked once. The connection on 20-to-30 car servers seems to be incredibly stable, and I ran door-to-door with another driver for 12 laps one race. I'd beat him off the corner and he'd beat me into it...over and over.
** Speaking of door to door, multiple lines work at most tracks. You'll see guys running high, guys running low, and guys all over the place. You don't see single-file runs. One guy mentioned he set his car up to run around the wall, and he was just as fast as the rest of the people trying to stick it to the bottom.
Cons
** It's $50 for a mod. Granted, all of the stock car mods I've tried are less-than-stellar, but it's a mod. It installs like rFactor's installer, it has re-touched menu screens with all of the same options. It doesn't even have a season mode. Just testing, race weekend, and online. There are some replay theaters and crap, but it's a bare-bones game for $50.
** On larger fields, sometimes the cars "lag weave". They'll move from left to right, and your car can pick it up as a hit, causing it to hurt your line, even if they didn't actually hit you and weave right back to where they actually are. This happens a lot in the early laps with a huge field, but it could be server-related, too. In the mid-20 car races, I didn't see it at all, and we were shooting 3 wide into turn 1 at Kansas.
** Did I mention it's $50 for a mod? If you don't run online, you will only have single races available and that may turn some people off. For ONLINE PLAY, though, I'd easily pay $100 for it.
It supposedly will be in the Race '07 add-on.
