I’ve built 2 cars with widebody kits in the game, the 1995 911 and the Jaguar F type R. Aside from looking dope af, do these kits have any race benefits? I used the cars in races and they seem harder to steer and might be better off without the kits installed. Am I wrong here?
Depends on what the body kit provides and how you build your car. Normally it adds tire width which can enable the use of lower tire tiers, decrease PI level or add grip without much PI cost.
Some body kits come with a fixed front aero which isn’t useful, others come with adjustable ones. For example the Huracan on S900 really profits from using its body kit.
All else consider equal, wide body kits improve lateral grip. Basically the wide body kits make the car wider at the bottom of the car. Paired that with tires that are pushed out further than stock and the car grips better. It basically reduces body roll.
A basic example is a bicycle and a bicycle with rear training wheels. At rest a bicycle will fall. At rest a bicycle with training wheels will lean a bit either way but not fall.
Wide body kits are basically like adding training wheels on all four corners of the car. It stabilizes the car.
On a RWD car, wide body kits should help make the rear end of the car more stable but also add a desirable amount of front understeer. Through tuning you can reduce the understeer somewhat.
On AWD and FWD cars this can be a problem. In stock form AWD cars (especially swapped AWD cars) and FWD cars have various degrees of understeer and little or no oversteer. Adding a wide body kit could amplify the understeer and thereby making it harder to turn. Once again tuning can help, but it’s possible that things could be worse.
Now for all the above, if you have a roll cage and widest tire widths on the car, rigidness of the car should increase and it’s possible the car won’t turn well. Once again the effects will likely be worse in awd and FWD cars.
I’m phrasing things generally since there are cars that are exception to the rules or have unique handling characteristics caused by excessive length, disproportionate weight distributions, or engine placements.
Note that upgrading a car to X999 or S2 that initially started in a much lower class can also be an issue. Max upgrading of cars is not the best thing to do in most cases in all Forza games. Max power plus a super rigid car is a recipe for comically bad handling.
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