Originally Posted by: Dadiodude 
Rivals isn't a big part of the game any more for me. Back in FM4 a few of us used to push each other and beating a buddy's time was just as much fun as racing. I'm not that quick because I always run my own tunes but lack the patience to get them just right although we used to get some respectable times. Our little club was running around 30th when we quit and moved to the XB1- in both 5 and 6 I haven't really done rivals and certainly haven't gone for any lap times - there's no incentive any more. I'm sure I'm not alone.
Like others have said, a lot of the times you're beating are just people getting bashed about in a race or just running an unoptimised car for a lap or two.
It's a step backwards, I learnt a great deal running in rivals and it was the only time I ever got close to tuning a car as well as some of the experienced guys. Perhaps I'll should dust off the controller and take a look :)
I think this is partially due to Turn 10 axing the overall leaderboards (ie overall for all variations of a track in a class, overall for all tracks in a class, overall for all classes on all tracks). I had a blast racing up the overall leaderboards in Forza 4, so much so that I kept doing it all the way up until Forza 6 came out (sadly I ended up just barely outside the top 100 as I am bad). I'm just not into hotlapping now that the overall rankings are gone.
Or maybe that's just a thing only I miss, I dunno.