Horizon Rally - having trouble

Forza Horizon Legacy Horizon FH1 Discussion
1

I am getting destroyed in Horizon Rally. In the first event, Beaumont, I am consistently landing in 50th place by a significant margin.

Is there any good advice out there for this? I’ve tried searching for a guide or walkthrough online, but I’ve found nothing. I have zero experience with rally racing games, and I’m eager to learn, but I’m having trouble finding any data.

Thanks!

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I should probably nuke this message. I spoke to a friend about it today, who corrected some horrible advice I received about car selection and config, and I’m doing better now. Still not great, but I finished 29th. I see a path forward.

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I beat it within the first two days of having it on medium but I had to run it near perfect with absolutely no crashes. The car you start out with is good for the lower classes, but for A and S I’d suggest the EVO since it’s faster. The first couple races aren’t too hard since they just want you to get used to it. No matter what do your best to stay in the middle or close to the middle of the track or else you’ll probably hit a tree or a wall or lose control and crash. When you hit a jump try to go off it as straight as possible because if you go off at an angle then that is the angle you will land at and if it’s too much of an angle it’s a bitch to get control of your car again. And listen to your codriver. If he says don’t cut, then don’t cut the corner or if he says there’s a ditch on the inside you might want to take the outer edge of the turn. He will also tell you if there is a turn coming up and how tight it is which tells you if you need to brake and downshift, or just let off the throttle and slow down a little. And remember that your car kinda slides around corners and such so you don’t have to brake hard on every turn, but if you’re turning you generally don’t want to be in full throttle because then you could lose control/spin out. It really isn’t as hard as it sounds or looks, you just have to get used to it. This was the first time I did any type of rally races as well.

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Despite the Rally in the description and the dirt present it behaves much like normal tarmac racing so just keep it neat and tidy and you will get faster in no time.

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Attempt to maintain traction at all times.

Build is in the description.

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Thank you! Also, wow, 8500 points. Impressive!

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A couple of notes;

  • You’re not limited to the “Rally” cars, you could use the Nissan GT-R for example, just as long as it falls in the B class for that first set of races. As a matter of fact, my best results for the first 3 Beaumont stages are with the GT-R. All you need to for any car to compete is to give it the Rally Tires, Springs, and Transmission, it doesn’t even need to be AWD, although I prefer it.
  • If you don’t already, start learning to downshift in addition to braking to slow for corners. It helps to slow you down and also saves time as you’ll already be in the proper gear upon corner exit.
  • A “square” turn, is likely to be one you need to slow more significantly for, I usually consider it a double-downshift corner.
  • If you don’t like your result for a stage, restart it and run it again. You’ll start to learn the layout and anticipate the course, which will result in better times.
  • If you screw something up, don’t be afraid to rewind and do it until you get it right. Learning to take ‘problem areas’ will make you faster and you’ll setup for that section better the next time (see previous restart advice).
  • Turn on Full driving line for a while, this will help you learn where you might be able to setup for a corner or save time. This is especially helpful for those corners where your Co tells you to “cut” the corner on hairpins and such.
  • Pump the brakes prior to a jump, this will transfer the weight of the car forward compressing the nose of the car down so that when you go over you aren’t launching and you’ll fly less in addition to landing at a better angle relative to the course. The more time you spend in the air, the more time you lose, the less control you’ll have on direction and the less control when you land. Being in the air is fun, but is bad for racing the clock. Learning exactly when to pump the brakes takes a little bit of practice, but you should be able to figure it out fairly quickly.
  • Keep your eyes focused far out on the course, usually as far as your line of sight. Don’t let your focus shift to your immediate surroundings, just keep your corners in the corner of your eyes.
  • The game will show you upcoming corners in a little pop-up box with an arrow of the direction. You’ll notice that the arrow will be either green (speed), amber (maintain) or red (slow). It is just like the suggested line, so use that as a gauge of how to take the next corner, but be aware that just because a corner is ‘green’ doesn’t mean that the section immediately following it will allow you to go all out. Again, learning the route and anticipating sections will be the best way to drop time.
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BTW, the 1992 Ford Escort RS Cosworth is a good candidate for the Beaumont series (all four races). I built one up and went 4-1-1-1 with it.

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(:

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Just slightly off topic, but what cars are good for the rally races that aren’t in the rally pack? I saw that the Skyline was mentioned. I’m assuming that the RS200 and Audi Quattro would be good as well?

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My preferred rally cars:

AWD Lancia’s
Escort
Evo VI
RS200
Occasionally Celica

Most other cars mentioned can be made competitive but would not be my go to cars.

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The design should be that the Sport Quattro and RS200 should excel at any Rally race, although the Quattro doesn’t seem to get the same level of SHALB values as some of the Fords, Subarus & Mitsubishis for the B class.

I haven’t driven everything, but I’d suggest that the following are good candidates (sans the ones in the Rally DLC);

Audi: Sport Quattro, RS4, RS4 Avant
Lancia: Delta S4, Delta Int. EVO, Stratos HF
Subaru: 22b STi, WRX STi
Peugeot: 205 T16
Ford: Sierra Cosworth, RS200
VW: Golf R
Mitsubishi: Lancer VI Evo GSR, Lancer X Evo GSR
Nissan: Skyline GT-Rs
BMW: M3, M3-GTR

Suspect would be good:
BMW: M5
Nissan: Silvia Spec-R
RUF: all

When in doubt, you won’t go wrong if you default to the Ford, Subaru, Mitsubishi or Lancia cars mentioned above.

Suspect would NOT be good candidates;
Ferrari: any
Lotus: any
Mercedes-Benz: any
Boutique: any

Ferrari and Lotus are track oriented cars and the probably would not deal well anytime a tire left the ground.
Mercedes is typically a heavy car with a lot of power. They would likely slide through any corner where you would want to brake or change directions quickly.
Boutique: The Joss, Ascari, Devon, etc. cars are all super cars meant for the track, not really meant for off road and unstable conditions. Like a Carrera GT, they are meant to be low to the ground and depend on aerodynamics to a degree to keep as much tire patch on the pavement as possible. That’s not a good formula for rallying.

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Last night, I spent a good number of hours building up every car I mentioned above. The four best B class cars (IMHO) with AWD are;

Ford Escort RS Cosworth
Subaru 22b STi
Mitsubishi Lancer VI Evo GSR
Lancia Delta S4

The RWD cars are better on flat gravel/dirt than on the undulating surfaces you’ll see in Rally, but both the Lancia 037 Stradale and the Nissan Silvia Spec-R did pretty well for me. I thought that the Lancia Stratos HF would be better, but I just couldn’t get as good of times out of it. The 037 Stradale actually has a lot of choices you can make with its configuration, depending on if you want speed or handling (or a mix of both). I just wish we could swap out to an AWD configuration there. I was also surprised at how poorly the Audi Sport Quattro is represented in the game, this rally legend has none of the aero body kits that many of the other rally cars get and it really doesn’t shine when upgraded in either B or A classes, even though it was a WRC champion…

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