Hey... the STI is actually very, very good on the racetrack, even if the steering is not EVO sharp. Just remember to keep the revs up. That car is ridiculously easy to clutch-kick into a four-wheel drift.
Could be worse... you could have an automatic STI. That car laaaaaaaaaaaaaaags.
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What I miss is the "Stage 4" turbos available in GT4 for some cars, as those approximate what you can get from a vehicle with a high-end build such as seen on drag cars. Which is... wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, bang... 1000 hp... shift.
While it sucks not having 1000 horsepower GT-Rs and Supras to play around with... realistically, such cars aren't reliable on the racetrack. A "tuner car" with about 1000 horses will hold together for multiple drag passes with cool-down periods in-between, or for two or three hot laps (one, if you're unlucky)... but at extreme power levels, things break while racing (Time Attack cars rarely have more than 600 hp... the fastest American time-attack car, the Sierra Sierra Evo, has an estimated 600 whp, but that's fully built, and stripped a gearbox during the loss to Tarzan at the World Time Attacks a month or two ago).
Since GT5 doesn't have a drag mode and focuses on road racing, the power levels we have right now are reasonably sufficient.
What sucks is the artificial limitations to tuning you get with certain cars... the lack of turbo options for high-revvers (though I see the point... since you have to detune the engine... lower compression... to get more turbo power) and the ridiculously low limits of some cars. You can stroke out a Beetle to about 1.9 - 2.4 liters and make over 200 hp... more with a turbo... but then, reliability with that much on the Beetle gearbox is questionable, anyway...
Be nice if they had an army of researchers plugging in real-world numbers for car modifications... (500 Abarth hill-climb gearsets... obscure Protege cam grinds... Alfa Romeo Group N cams...) but with this many cars, that's a gargantuan task.