Playground Games’ Forza Horizon 5 is pretty fun, whether you’re partaking in Street Races, building new Festival Sites or locating Barn Finds. While you can customize it to be as arcade-like as you’d like, its simulation aspects are still incredibly robust. This extends to the ability to upgrade and tune pretty much every aspect of your car. While you might think that auto-upgrading a vehicle is the be-all, end-all solution to improving performance, manual tuning is a very important key in all of this.
Not every race in Forza Horizon 5 is the same. A straight road Drag Race emphasizes speed and acceleration but grip and handling is more important for an Off-Road Race (without sacrificing too much of your speed there either). Being able to tune your vehicle based on a race’s conditions and requirements can be challenging but also provide a significant edge.
To manually tune your car, go into the Garage and select Upgrades and Tuning. Look for the Custom Upgrade option in order to tune each aspect of a car specifically. You can also tune a car before a race but it’s advised to familiarize yourself with each aspect of tuning and what works best in which scenario.
Let’s look at all of the different aspects of tuning, starting with Platform and Handling:
- Race Brakes – Options for tuning your brakes
- Race/Drift/Rally Spring and Dampers – Adjust the alignment of Springs and Dampers
- Race Front Anti-Roll Bar – Tune the Front Anti-Roll Bar
- Race Rear Anti-Roll Bar – Tune the Rear Anti-Roll Bar
Next up is the Drivetrain’s tuning options:
- Sport Transmission – Tuning for the Final Drive only
- Any Race Transmission – Options for All Gearing tuning
- Sport Differential – Only for tuning the Acceleration Differential
- Race/Rally/Off-Road/Drift Differentials – Tuning options for All Differentials
Tires and Rims have only one tuning option for Any Tire Compound. Aero and Appearance tuning options can be divided into the following
- Adjustable Front Bumper – Tuning for the Front Aero Downforce
- Adjustable Rear Wing – Tuning for the Rear Aero Downforce
If you’re keen on learning all of the basics of tuning and what each option does, check out the video guide below from HokiHoshi. It for highlight which option to adjust depending on the situation, which setting will result in understeer and oversteer, and so on.
Forza Horizon 5 is currently available for Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S and PC. Check out our official review here for more details.
