Happening on my computer as well, most races but most recently the Volcan Sprint with the Ariel Atom V8 (AWD swapped with 7 speed).
Platform:
Windows 11 22H2
Ryzen 7 5800H
NVIDIA RTX 3070Ti Laptop
16GB RAM
So weāve now had 3.8K views on this thread and 165 votes - canāt understand why the voting is so low as it seems to be widespread.
Probably most people do the usual, view but donāt bother to vote.
Max - this is your thread so you must have seen the numbers. When will the action to get a fix begin ?
glad itās not just me, actually, I was worried sick it was some sort of driver issue,
Anyway Iām having this issue on
PC
with a
TS PC Racer
and whatever the shifter that thrustmaster has is called (the problem also occurs without the shifter mind)
I did note that when I place the shifter into neutral and then revv the engine, the gear display on the bottom right of the display switches from āNā to ā1ā, only for it to flip back to āNā once the gas pedal is released. When using a sequential shifter, the game refuses for the car to be put in the āNeutralā position.
Affected by the āshift twice for second gearā bug.
Windows 10
Microsoft store
Xbox controller
Multiple issues in multiple cars in multiple events. Many come up in Freeroam, with cars starting in reverse and/or needing to double-shift to advance to 2nd. A few events have had the double shift issue appear; none with reverse glitch. Yet.
XBox Series X, controller user, manual selected, launch control on.
Same here. Iām on PC, using a Thrustmaster T248 wheel and Thrustmaster TH8A shifter. It happens at any time, at any type of race or track. Solo, Co-Op, PVP, Rivals. No matter if I select Manual or Manual + Clutch. Getting out of reverse requires two inputs regardless of transmission option or if I use paddles or H-shifter. I can see it in my wheelās display that there has been a gear change (by the + symbol appearing briefly), but the car is still either in 1st or reverse.
If car manages to launch, the only time it wonāt shift into another 1st, is when using manual + clutch with the H-shifter. But that very rarely happens. And when it doesnāt, itās āno mercy reversieā again.
Impossible to pinpoint what is causing this. It is entirely random. Happens more often than not. To add to this, in case itās related, when stopping at a house or event, the prompt to activate (with a wheel itās ā7ā), the button is crossed out.
If it hasnāt been happening to you yet then it might not appear.
The mouse cursor has been going for quite a long time, the whole reverse thing only been going for me since the last series launch, which was still a while back now but is widespread throughout the community.
Other side of the world ? Where exactly ? Could be that the bug hasnāt traveled that far yetā¦ donāt think they carry passports 
Or he got canned because he was turning the game into some kind of āfun fairā and the uppers at T10 didnāt liked that because itās going to far away from what Horizon actually should be?
To me it seems the guy is better off with developing fantasy games or what ever.
same here, but its even worse to where i have to tap my brakes and then start driving to actually go anywhere, as well as when im drifting with my wheel and h-shifter the game goes into 1st or 2nd at random when im on 3rd on the shifter, i cant even play the game like this anymore tbh.
Thanks for the info and taking the time to investigate the weird mouse infestation.
Itās an odd one for sure but at least Iāve got a workaround for now. Itās not a major pain anyways unless it gets stuck in the middle of the screen.
I remember people saying it just before S20 went live but I didnāt get it till the actual start day. Might have been sitting dormant after the update on the Tuesday before the actual Thursday start.
The Heli doesnāt bother me that much though I donāt get why itās there in non rally events as itās not even giving pace notes in those. Just a nuisance on screen for no reason there, not to mention a waste of graphics / processing power.
Workaround until it is fixed:
Every time you switch your car - go to difficulty settings and turn launch control off, save settings and turn it back on and save.
After that the car wont start in reverse gear when going into races - at least so far from what i have tested.
The bug with starting in reverse (already happening after leaving the garage) seems to happen whenever i switch a car and/or upgrade a car.
Hope this helps some people and the staff to nail the issue down 
Canāt use LC - No E-Brake since the Oct OS update mess.
My opinions on Mike have changed over time. Iāve read a lot of posts on here from some people claiming how he ruined the game but I only started in FH4, just three weeks before FH5 (only bought Xbox for FH5 and had 3 weeks of FH4 waiting for it to release). Iāve since played all FH titles but honestly, the more recent are my favorites so MB did a great job IMHO, but Iām not a huge fan of the E for Everyone rating which, whoever decided to take the franchise that direction, didnāt do it many favors Iād say.
BTTT:
NEW PHENOMENA related to the reverse/shift bug
Yesterday I experienced automatic downshifts for the first time EVER. I have video clip, not sure I can post here, Iāll try a OneDrive link or XB Live to show you all.
I drive Manual (no clutch), have driven Horizon Open and this weekās Trial with LC On and Off and had reverse starts in both scenarios, but not always. i.e. Race 1, start in 1st, Race 2, start in Reverse. No discernible pattern to bug.
https://1drv.ms/v/s!AiElDvwt2Fg8gaMRj0rEzD2agjIOPA
Not sure how to embed the vid but link works. Only one or two of the downshifts were intentional (early in the clip and later on the highway, however the latter example downshifted directly into first, jumping down several gears!), every other downshift you see/hear is an automatic shift by the game.
This has annoyed me just as much as, if not more, than the double first shift and reverse gear start! Unacceptable.
Seems like auto is a mess in general. Why did it keep you in 4th after the pole for example?
On the Xbox Series X, there is a high chance that upon starting any community created playlist event, the car will always launch in reverse (and need to double shift) and the only way to fix that is to restart the game. In one session, Iāve restarted that āThe Windy Cityā event over 50 times and every single time my car launched in reverse. Upon restarting the game, the issue somehow went away, but I still need to double shift to get out of first gear. Looks like the issue is pretty random, but incredibly annoying.
From the beginning of the clip it was meant to be a skill drive - I like the highway section there, can rack up 10 SP fairly quickly - but when I noticed the first auto downshift I just started driving in a random direction with no real purpose. I hit the āpoleā because I was focusing on the gear indicator lol
I was expecting it to auto downshift from 4th, hence retaining that gear.
Then I was changing up the gears to see if the game would auto downshift again, and it did.
Whatever coding errors have caused these bugs I donāt expect theyāll be rectified. Instead I think theyāre working on a new build adding the oval track and other new fixes / features to a rolled-back build, kind of ātrial and errorā to identify it. I donāt foresee a hotfix, rather an entire new update to remove the gear selection/shifting mess. Thatās my hypothesis. But weāll all have to wait and see.
So you were driving manual and it shifted like that without your input? If thatās the caseā¦holy mooooh!
Why are they taking so long to fix this? I canāt stand driving around in automatic mode, there are multiple instances per race where you need to downshift to a lower gear to remain in higher power band coming out of turns etc. and the game will just keep you in a higher gear, I also donāt like that some cars will spin tires off the line but instead of holding it or modulating throttle if the RPM comes near red-line it shifts you into second so itās a spin tires + bog into second start.
Anyhow, this is a ridiculous bug that seems like a straightforward fix, the developers could surely knock this bug out in 30 min tops, issue a 20mb hotfix download, that they arenāt has me really worried. I mean itās not an isolated bug, many if not all of us using manual transmission are affected, so why are they dragging their feet with this?
Absolutely not confidence inspiring, I think Iām done with Forza Horizon after this, Iām just tired of the BS and incompetence.