I liked the idea, but I absolutely hated how short the races were in the first one. You had to cut corners and smash your way to the front to win in time. Really don't understand why you couldn't choose your own lap amount. I like to race clean, and the game just wouldn't allow it. Did #2 fix this?
I even find current Forza Motorsport games suffer from this issue.
FTR, I love Forza, it's the 1 game keeping me from switching to Playstation. Also, this game looks gorgeous.