Apex Speed Craft

Personal reference for tuning cars and dialing in feel.

Last updated: 27 July 2026. This guide has been revised for the 15 June physics rebalance (drag tire nerf, AWD handling changes) and the 13 July Series 3 update. See the Changelog at the bottom for exactly what moved and why.

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What Changed Recently (Read This First)

If you last used this page before mid-June, three things affect your existing tunes:

Drag tires no longer corner. The 15 June patch gutted lateral grip on drag tires. Their PI cost is unchanged, so your build stays in class — but if you were borrowing a drag-tire setup for circuit, touge or time attack, that build is dead. Drag strip tunes are unaffected.

AWD is no longer the automatic answer. The same patch rebalanced handling enough that well-tuned RWD is genuinely competitive again, particularly on technical roads. AWD is still what most people race and still the default baseline here — but it’s no longer a free win.

Every Rivals leaderboard was reset on 13 July. If you were chasing a benchmark time to validate a tune, that benchmark is gone. The boards are rebuilding from scratch, which means current top times are softer than they were and will harden over the coming weeks.

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Slider Reference

Quick notes on what each setting does and whether to trust real-world logic with it.

Tire Pressure — Compromised. Controls responsiveness and grip balance. Does not drive tire temperature the way physics predicts — setting pressure low doesn’t generate heat, setting it high doesn’t cool tires. Use it as a responsiveness and grip dial. Higher means more responsive, less grip, stiffer feel. Lower means more grip, softer feel.

Target PSI depends on compound, not a single flat number:

• Stock, street and rally tires: 26–28 PSI hot
• Semi-slicks and slicks: 30–33 PSI hot
• Drift tires, front: 30–32 PSI hot
• Drift tires, rear: 35–40 PSI hot — deliberately high. You’re reducing rear grip on purpose to sustain angle, which is why this sits outside the normal range.
• Drag rears: 15 PSI for launch traction. Drag fronts max out at 55 PSI.

Gearing (Final Drive) — Real. Works as expected. Slide left for longer gears and higher top speed, right for shorter gears and faster acceleration. Adjust so you hit redline at the fastest point on the track. Swap to a drag or drift gearbox to pack gears tightly into a narrow powerband.

Camber — Real. Negative camber buys cornering grip at the cost of straight-line grip. Trust real-world ranges. Around -1.5° to -2.5° front for circuit road racing. Technical roads and RWD builds generally want less — see the Touge section. Drift needs extreme front tilt to keep a flat steering patch at angle.

Toe — Compromised / specialty use. Behaves unpredictably in Horizon’s standard grip models. Leave at 0.0 for racing unless you’re fixing a specific entry hesitation or running a dedicated drift alignment.

Caster — Real. More caster means more stability and more self-centering. 6.0–7.0° is usually better than the 5.0° default, and helps generate aggressive dynamic camber under load.

Anti-Roll Bars (1–65 scale) — Opaque scale, real behavior. The numbers are unitless but the direction is rock solid. Stiffen the front for more understeer, stiffen the rear for more oversteer. This is your primary oversteer/understeer balancing tool.

On the 1/65 split — scope matters. The extreme 1 front / 65 rear ARB setup is still highly effective in circuit and sprint AWD lobbies, where it forces rotation through corners that AWD platforms otherwise push wide in. It is not the answer on touge and technical elevation-change roads. Our own post-nerf touge testing found balanced setups with mildly soft overall stiffness beating the front-soft / rear-stiff pattern, because a soft front paired with a stiff rear makes turn-in inconsistent under trail braking — and trail braking is most of what you do on a mountain road. Use 1/65 where the corners are flat and repeatable. Back off it where the road moves under you.

Springs (kgf/mm or lb/in) — Compromised / bounded. Absolute values are mostly meaningless — Forza floors minimum rates well above what the real car would use. Don’t chase real-world numbers. Tune ratios and front-to-rear balance matched to weight distribution, and watch telemetry for suspension travel.

Ride Height — Real. Lower is better for cornering and scrapes on bumps. Higher is better over rough ground and worse in corners. Road: as low as you can get away with. Rally and cross country: max it out to exploit suspension travel.

Damping (1–20 scale, bump + rebound) — Opaque scale, real behavior. Unitless and probably normalized per car, but the rules hold:

• Rebound roughly 1.5× bump — bump landing around 55–65% of rebound. Community testing has settled this ratio; treat it as reliable.
• Too soft on bump: diving and bouncing
• Too stiff on bump: skipping over bumps, losing grip
• Too soft on rebound: oversteer on turn-in
• Too stiff on rebound: understeer on turn-in

Aero (Downforce) — Real (updated). Now features Aero Balance scaling. Max downforce for tight cornering circuits, minimum for top-speed tracks.

• AWD circuit note: keep front aero high but drop rear wing downforce to the slider minimum to kill straight-line drag. AWD platforms don’t need rear downforce to find exit traction.

Brakes — Real (bug fixed).

Notice: The legacy inverted brake balance slider bug from previous titles is fixed in FH6. The slider now does exactly what it says.

• Balance 51–53% front for most racing, to handle forward weight transfer under heavy braking. Pressure 100% unless you’re locking up constantly without ABS.

Differential (Accel/Decel %) — Real. Behaves like real LSD settings. 0% is open, 100% is welded.

• Road racing RWD: 60% accel / 20% decel
• Road racing AWD: 45% accel / 0% decel front, 65% accel / 15% decel rear
• Centre diff (AWD only): higher percentage sends more power rearward. 70–75% for neutral road feel, 80–85% for off-road sliding
• Touge RWD: 50–60% accel / 15–25% decel
• Drift: 100% accel / 100% decel

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Choosing a Compound

The reference used to assume you’d already picked a tire. Post-nerf that’s a real decision, so briefly:

Sport or Race tires are the default for circuit and touge. Pick based on what your class budget allows.

Rally tires on moderate width and 17-inch rims are the popular all-rounder for mixed online lobbies where you don’t know the surface in advance.

Drag tires belong on a drag strip and nowhere else. Since 15 June they carry a real cornering penalty. The PI discount is still there, which is what makes them tempting — resist it outside drag events.

Drift tires for drift, obviously, but note they’re also viable for learning car control on touge if you care more about the feel than the clock.

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A Quick Sanity-Check Number: Mechanical Balance

Community guides have converged on a single “Mechanical Balance” score — roughly 0.55 to 0.65 for road racing, with 0.60 as the sweet spot — as shorthand for how your ARB and spring balance nets out front to rear. It’s not a replacement for the ARB-first approach above; think of it as a second opinion. If the car feels right through the Fix-The-Feel sections but the number is wildly outside that range, check for something structural — wrong suspension type, wrong compound, an upgrade you forgot about — rather than chasing the number itself.

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Fix-The-Feel: Understeer

Understeer on entry (won’t turn in as you brake):

• Reduce front tire pressure 1–2 PSI
• Soften front ARB
• Soften front bump damping
• Decrease front brake balance percentage if you’re locking fronts
• Decrease front differential deceleration lock

Understeer mid-corner (pushes wide off the brakes):

• Stiffen rear ARB
• Increase front aero, reduce rear aero drag
• Reduce rear tire pressure
• Add more negative front camber

Understeer on exit (pushes wide on throttle):

• Decrease front differential acceleration lock
• Shift centre differential balance rearward (AWD)
• Soften front bump damping

Fix-The-Feel: Oversteer

Oversteer on entry (rear steps out braking in):

• Increase rear tire pressure
• Soften rear rebound damping
• Increase front brake balance percentage
• Stiffen rear ARB

Oversteer mid-corner (rear loose through the turn):

• Soften rear ARB
• Reduce front aero or increase rear downforce
• Reduce negative rear camber toward -1.0°

Oversteer on exit (rear steps out on throttle):

• Reduce rear differential acceleration lock
• Shift centre differential balance forward (AWD)
• Soften rear bump damping or rear spring rates

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Starting-Point Tunes

Ballpark values. Ratios and balance matter more than absolute numbers. Adjust from here.

Road Racing — AWD (Primary Baseline)

Still what most people race, and still the fastest route to a competitive circuit car.

Setting	Front Axle	Rear Axle
Tire PSI	28.0	27.5
Camber	-1.8°	-1.2°
Toe	0.0°	0.0°
Caster	6.8°	—
ARB	1.0 (minimum)	65.0 (maximum)
Rebound	13.5	13.0
Bump	5.4	5.2
Aero	Max downforce	Minimum downforce
Brake Balance	52% front	—
Brake Pressure	100%	—
Diff Accel	45% front / 65% rear	Centre: 75% rear
Diff Decel	0% front / 15% rear	—

Road Racing — RWD (Secondary Baseline)

Post-rebalance, a properly tuned RWD circuit car is competitive rather than a handicap. Note the ARB split is nowhere near as extreme — RWD doesn’t need forced rotation.

Setting	Front Axle	Rear Axle
Tire PSI	28.0	27.0
Camber	-1.6°	-1.0°
Toe	0.0°	0.0°
Caster	6.5°	—
ARB	22.0	30.0
Rebound	12.5	12.0
Bump	7.0	6.8
Aero	Moderate-high	Moderate
Brake Balance	52% front	—
Brake Pressure	100%	—
Diff Accel	—	60%
Diff Decel	—	20%

Touge / Technical Mountain Roads

New section. Touge is its own discipline — elevation changes, trail braking, and narrow roads reward a different setup philosophy than flat circuits. Do not bring your 1/65 circuit tune up a mountain.

The governing principle: keep the tire on the road through elevation change. Soften overall, shorten the gears, and keep the balance close to even so turn-in stays predictable when you’re braking into a corner that drops away from you.

Setting	Front Axle	Rear Axle
Tire PSI	26.0–28.0	26.0–28.0
Camber	-1.0° to -1.5°	-0.5° to -0.8°
Toe	0.0°	0.0°
Caster	6.5°	—
ARB	18.0	24.0
Springs	Mildly soft, balanced	Mildly soft, balanced
Rebound	10.0	9.8
Bump	6.0	5.8
Aero	Moderate	Moderate
Gearing	Shortened — pull hard in mid-range	—
Diff Accel	—	50–60%
Diff Decel	—	15–25%

Full route-by-route car recommendations live in the touge guide.

Rally / Dirt Track

Setting	Front Axle	Rear Axle
Tire PSI	24.5	24.0
Camber	-1.5°	-1.0°
Toe	0.1° toe-out	0.0°
Caster	6.5°	—
ARB	12.0	22.0
Springs	High (65–75% up)	High (65–75% up)
Rebound	10.5	9.8
Bump	4.2	3.8
Aero	Moderate-high	Moderate
Diff Accel	50% front / 85% rear	Centre: 70% rear
Diff Decel	5% front / 10% rear	—

Off-Road / Cross Country

Setting	Front Axle	Rear Axle
Tire PSI	22.0	22.0
Camber	-1.0°	-0.5°
Toe	0.0°	0.0°
Caster	6.0°	—
ARB	10.0	12.0
Springs	Maximum height	Maximum height
Rebound	9.5	9.0
Bump	3.5	3.2
Aero	Low	Low
Diff Accel	50% front / 95% rear	Centre: 80% rear
Diff Decel	0% front / 10% rear	—

Drift (RWD Baseline)

Setting	Front Axle	Rear Axle
Tire PSI	30.0–32.0	35.0–40.0
Camber	-5.0° (maximum)	-1.0° to -2.0°
Toe	0.4° toe-out	0.2° toe-in
Caster	7.0° (maximum)	—
ARB	Max (~55)	Soft (10–20)
Springs	Firm front	Softer rear
Rebound	11.5	10.0
Bump	4.0	3.5
Aero	Max	Min
Diff Accel	—	100%
Diff Decel	—	70–100%

Car selection and tandem-specific advice in our drift cars guide, and wheel-specific setup in the Moza, Fanatec and Thrustmaster guide.

Drag (Straight Line Strip)

Still accurate post-patch. The 15 June update nerfed drag tire cornering grip specifically to stop people using drag tires in circuit, touge and time attack events. Drag strip times and drag leaderboards are explicitly unaffected. If you’re tuning for the strip, this table stands. If you were borrowing a drag-tire tune for anything else, that’s the build that needs to change — not this one.

Setting	Front Axle	Rear Axle
Tire PSI	55.0 (maximum)	15.0 (minimum)
Camber	0.0°	0.0°
Toe	0.0°	0.0°
ARB	Minimum stiffness	Minimum stiffness
Springs	Stiff	Soft
Ride Height	Minimum	Slight rear raise
Aero	Absolute minimum	Absolute minimum
Gearing	Drift/drag 4-speed gearbox	Tightly packed ratios
Diff Accel	—	100%
Diff Decel	—	0%

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Core Principles

1. Ratios and balance matter. Absolute numbers mostly don’t. Don’t chase real-world spring rates. Tune front-to-rear balance against weight distribution, and use the Mechanical Balance readout in the Miscellaneous tab as a sanity check — 0.55 to 0.65 for road racing, 0.60 as the target.
2. ARBs and the differential are your most reliable sliders. They behave most predictably inside the physics engine. Reach for them first when balancing cornering and power delivery.
3. The 1/65 ARB split is real, but it’s discipline-specific. Use it on circuits and sprints with AWD, where forced rotation beats the platform’s natural push. Don’t use it on touge or technical elevation-change roads, where balanced and mildly soft wins because turn-in consistency under trail braking matters more than raw rotation.
4. Tire pressure is a responsiveness dial, not a thermal one. Target by compound: 26–28 PSI hot for street and rally, 30–33 for semi-slicks and slicks, 15 PSI for drag rears. Drift rears run deliberately high at 35–40 to shed rear grip.
5. Damping balance beats absolute damping values. Keep bump at roughly 55–65% of rebound to maintain tire contact.
6. Alignment works like real life, except toe. Leave toe at 0.0 for grip racing. Extreme front toe-out and rear toe-in are for holding drift angle, nothing else.
7. Drag tires are for drag. Since 15 June the cornering penalty is real. The PI discount is bait.
8. Change one thing at a time. Always.
9. If the car feels wrong everywhere, check upgrades before tuning. Wrong suspension type, wrong compound, or a weight shift from an engine swap will make any tune feel broken.

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Changelog

27 July 2026

• Scoped the 1/65 ARB guidance by discipline — valid for AWD circuit and sprint, explicitly not for touge. Resolves a conflict with our post-nerf touge testing.
• Added a Touge / Technical Mountain Roads baseline table.
• Added a Road Racing RWD secondary baseline; AWD remains the primary.
• Fixed a contradiction where Core Principles gave a flat 32–34 PSI target against the Slider Reference’s compound-dependent figures. Compound-dependent is correct.
• Aligned the Mechanical Balance range at 0.55–0.65 throughout.
• Added a Choosing a Compound section.
• Added drift rear pressure rationale (35–40 PSI is intentional, not an error).
• Noted the 13 July Series 3 Rivals leaderboard reset.

17 June 2026

• Updated the Drag section for the 15 June drag tire nerf.

May 2026

• Post-launch refresh for FH6 engine and chassis physics updates.

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Related: Post-nerf touge guide · Two meta GR86 tunes · Drift cars for beginners and tandem · Series 2 patch breakdown