So right now I have a REALLY hard time in multiplayer. I can never catch up to the main group in leagues and people keep passing me up. Which two options will make me overcome opponents more effectively, speed or acceleration?
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Handling?
First, ensure you have enough handling so you can jump on the throttle as quickly as possible coming out of a turn. If you’re not able to without driving off the track or wrecking, then you either need more handling, or more practice.
Once you get a feel for handling, I personally focus on acceleration. Only one race track is the exception - Le Mans. It has that super long straight. Otherwise, I focus on acceleration and brakes. Speed is something I generally don’t pay a lot of attention to.
Prioritise your car in this order for most tracks:
Handling > Acceleration > Braking > Top Speed > Launch
Pretty much the way I go about it, though sometimes swap acceleration with braking depending on the car and track.
The other thing is to look at the way you drive. What your racing lines are, are you smooth with your inputs and are you keeping the car at its limits without exceeding them. After all the best car setup in the world won’t help if the driver does not follow good lines with smooth control and know their cars capabilities.
For me it’s Acceleration > Light Weight> Handling > Speed > almost tie between Braking and Launch. I only worry about the last two if after testing my car is severely lacking.
I only add more handling when it’s actually needed. I default to lighter weight and power before bumping up handling stats.
On most tracks if you can out accelerate the field, you’ll win.
I would go for Accel over Speed but i do have an Iroc Z in C class which has a really good time on Watkins Glen which is quite a speed track, it only has 7.2 Accel, 6.7 speed and once it winds up it easily out Accels cars which are set up for Acceleration 
just not so great coming out of tight corners 
Countless times I’ve seen people with bullet cars that they cant control, build and handling are the most important thing along with your driving skills, racing lines and the ability to throttle control to come in and out of corners are the key. Anybody can run a fast lap, anybody can build a bullet car but CONCISTANCY will win you a race…just my personal opinion.
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Exactly… I am guilty of this. I might win once or twice and can hot lap fine in a bullet car but, I win more races in the cars I can be consistent in. Another driver with more skill might say different but, drive as much car as you can consistently. The better your skills the less handling ability you may need and that varies from driver to driver.
Yep. Skill determines how much handling to use. I have friends who drive Lemans builds on many tracks and dominate. It’s pretty awesome seeing that display of skill through the tight sections at Bathurst.
+1 AND +1…I have actually modified my ranking as I’ve learned to drive the last couple of years. Started off in FM5 (around March’14, though I tried the game for the first time in Dec’13), and as I’ve gotten comfortable with the tracks/classes, I have kept pushing a little bit the limit of handling as I’ve become a slightly better driver (yet, I know I have a long way to go). I have folks using my tunes at Bathurst that gain an additional 6-8 seconds beyond what I’ve done…lol…
So, back to the OP, it will depend on your current driving skills, yet, I’d suggest you push the limit a little bit to continue to get better. Thus, I’d pick the ranking that Swerve suggested above.
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Thank you everyone that replied! All this information is very useful and I will definitely put it to use. And the way it is for me is when I upgrade a car, I ALWAYS focus on handling to get really good grip, but from there it seems like grip is all I have in leagues. Acceleration and speed was always with the other racers but now I’ve learned some stuff from you guys. Thanks!
Also people who are good enough to not use the assists will get a lot better lap times, you gain a lot of time using manual clutch over automatic, its the same with all the assists really. TBH i can’t drive with the assists on it makes cars feel really bad, you just need to get practice in bud. I’ve been playing since forza 3 properly, started tuning in 5 now im breaking top 100 times quite easily in C class, dont really drive many other classes, i just like the versatility of that class, i suppose B class could be quite good as well, i don’t like classes that are dominated by 1 or 2 cars
Yea, I also drive with all the assists off. Just probably need more practice for me
Also here’s another thing: could I set my final drive for speed, then make the gears adjusted for acceleration and vice versa? Would that be effective?
One more thing: would it be smarter to put the final drive as acceleration but the gears be closer to speed? Could that possibly be effective?
What class are you in? Is the race gear box a stock item? If you are adding the race gearbox be mindful of the PI cost. I used these a lot but, not anymore. I tend to stick between stock, street, or sport. If the cost in PI is too great I avoid race because I can get so much more out of the car elsewhere.
One of the things I learned while trying to get better at parts selection. Still a long ways to go with that for me but, getting better.
Basicly that doesn’t really matter, as you would just get similar gear ratios by different means.
accel is king in a 3 lap race(lobbys) but you need to practice with said car so you can comfortably control it and not make mistakes which cost you the race.
when i race 3 lap lobbys i generally run cars i find easy to drive and hope the opposition don’t go crazy . one good ram ruins the race for me and its all to often imo.
Acceleration