Question about acceleration VS speed

I know acceleration is how fast the car accelerates from a stop and such, but how is this done in Forza 5? Is the speed stat the one that takes over after 120mph etc.? Where does acceleration taper off and speed is more of a factor? It may sound like a funny question but it’s been something boggling my mind. I hope you know what I mean by asking the question lol

speed is the cars potential top speed. old lemans is the only track where speed can be more important than acceleration. if you are tuning you will want to adjust your tranny tward accel not speed. basically you want to redline at the end of the tracks longest straight. and you do want to tune per track. old lemans is the opposite of yas, top gear seems to be the opposite of prague. a tune i finish in 1st place gets me last place on the other track.

If I hazard a guess or two:

Acceleration = 0~60mph performance (or something like that)
Speed = Absolute top speed for the car on a flat straight track

The answer, as is usually is, is “depends”. On a short track with more corners than straights acceleration is more important. On a longer track with long straights, speed COULD be more important. It completely depends on which car you are running on what track. The key is to have good acceleration/speed balance.

i BELIEVE in forza, acceleration is relative to the top speed.

i don’t know how the algorithms work to produce the number, but from real driving experience, i can say that if 2 cars have the same accelleration stat, they can still be seconds away from each other in a drag race. and it has everything to do with top speed. the accelleration stat is in some way relative to the vehicles top speed.

so if you have 2 cars where the ACCELERATION NUMBER is the same, the one with the larger TOP SPEED NUMBER will ACCELERATE faster than the other one. but i don’t know the math they use to get the actual number. of course gear ratios and driver skill will make differences, so i tested this out a while back in forza 4. we turned on traction control, automatic transmission, and selected cars with the same accelleration stat. and the higher top speed stat accelerated faster every time, except for a couple times where the launch made a big enough difference that it wasn’t a fair test of acceleration.

Speed and acceleration stats are separate from each other. Top speed is simply how fast your car can go, and acceleration is how quickly your car can get to that speed. If you want to get an idea of what I mean, enter tuning mode and on the left is a bunch of benchmark stats and you’ll see that there is a 0-60 time and a 0-100 time; the time it takes your car to get from 0-60 and 0-100, the faster your car’s acceleration stat.

Although cars with a high speed rating will often have high acceleration ratings as well, and that’s because reaching those speeds takes some significant power and that does translate to acceleration.

Basically,

Speed = how fast the car can go (150 mph). A measurement of change in distance / time.
Acceleration = how quickly the car reaches any speed (0-60 mph in 3 seconds). A measurement of change in speed / time.

Another way,

Speed requires Hp and rpms. Mostly a relationship of weight, aerodynsmics and HP. To fight the resistances of gravity (weight) air and road friction you need power.

Acceleration requires Hp and torque. A high torque will translate the Hp more quickly into speed. In order to continually accelerate you need constant torque applied with power. This is where a gearing ratio factors in.

I read all of the responses, alot of answers. Thank you all very much I appreciate it!

Simple physics really seeing as the game simulates some stuff well.

When the force pushing the car = the drag that when acceleration stops because it isn’t speeding up.

I suppose stability is important then because the higher the speed the car needs downforce the less drag and its teminal velocity is at a higher speed.

my guess is at 100mph is then your accelleration stat stops.