Beginners guide to Rally/Offroad races in Forza Horizon 5

The Forza Motorsport franchise always stuck to professional driving as a sport which got us used to having speckless surfaces that facilitated moving around the track and really take each machine to its most efficient point.

When Forza Horizon appeared with its driveable open world, we found ourselves discovering new areas and skills required to drive as we were now doing it over dirt, rocks and flora and that is a whole new competence.

As Forza Horizon 5 includes some rally and offroad races we want to help you out with everything you need to know from picking a car to making some equipment adjustments, leaving your opponents bitting your dust...quite literally.

How to build an offroad/rally vehicle in Forza Horizon 5

The first thing we must know is that weight is a key aspect of selecting a car as there is no other type of race that is affected by this measurement than offroad or rallies and we want to keep the vehicle as light as possible.

Another aspect to take into account is which drivetrain will give you the ultimate edge as most sports cars function with FWD (front-wheel drive) yet we would actually benefit a lot from having AWD (all-wheel drive) or RWD (rear-wheel drive) which will grant us better control of the car on irregular surfaces.

• Read more: Forza Horizon 5 Best off-road cars: Top 5 off-road vehicles in FH5

There is actually a very cheap car that can get you started in this type of offroad or rally races, which is the Nissan Pulsar GTI-R, as it compiles all of the features we mentioned earlier and you can buy it from the store for 20,000 credits.

You can definitely take that car as it is and start practising to get that muscle memory down in pace and taking corners on the very unstable surface, but there are some changes that we do recommend to take this car into optimal shape for rally/offroad races.

Here are some of the customizable changes you can buy to get the Pulsar GTI-R to become an off-road beast:

• RWD Drivetrain: With the physics changes made to Forza Horizon 5, RWD offers an amazing grip for lighter cars.
• 1.6L I4 Turbo Rally Engine: Rally engines, as we mentioned, tend to be lighter than stock ones while offering more horsepower.
• Race Clutch, Race Driveline and Rally Differential: We put all these together as they are all under the Drivetrain menu and will help you have a more efficient engine for irregular surfaces.
• Rally Springs and Dampers: This suspension will diminish the impact of bumpy roads and allow you to efficiently preserve speed.
• Front Bumper and Rear Wing: Besides looking sharp on the road these attachments will also help your car to be more stable and grippy while switching from pavement to dirt.

You can also play with other tuning settings like the width of the tires or if you are really into cars take a deep dive in the engine as well but this layout should be enough to get you by on the rally/offroad experience.

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Feature image courtesy of Playground Games.