This is an updated guide on how to tune a drift car for GT6. The guide will show you how to take any FR car and turn it into a drifter within a few minutes! Read and learn to setup your own GT6 drift tune today. You can use a wheel or controller as all this info applies to both. Each car will be slightly different and is based on feel as to what needs changing, so your car may not turn out perfect at first. Over time you will understand how each setting changes a drifting characteristic of the car and will be able to improve your tuning. Of course, if you want a pro tune, ask on the Team Shmo facebook page and it will possibly get done. For a few pointers on how to actually drift read this GT6 drift tips guide. If you create one that is just mind blowingly good tell me in the comments! If it’s super good I can test it and add it to Team Shmo for all to use.
CONTROLLER OR WHEEL?
I get this question a lot, and although it is slightly different between the two, they are also quite similar. So which one should you use? Before in GT5 the wheel was harder, however, you had more control for smoother drifts. While the controller was easier, but your drifts may not come out as smooth. In GT6 the suspension really changed a lot so the added control of a wheel will probably help a lot more. I use a controller for it’s convenience, but it’s harder to hold smooth drifts. Which you should use is really up to you. I do however suggest learning with a controller first than once you get how the car should move, try to learn again with the wheel. A wheel is still harder to learn from, but I think better to use after you have mastered how to drift.
Controller setup is always the same no matter what you are doing. Race, drift, rally, etc you want to change the controller layout so you use R2 as gas and L2 for brake as well as left joystick to steer. You are basically trying to replicate a wheel on your controller. The L and R buttons are similar to gas and brake pedals which is perfect since you can press them gently or hard to give you a TON more control over your car. Same goes for the joystick, it just gives you more control compared to the buttons. You want drifting to be as smooth as possible. I have my controller setup guide if you want to see the exact layout.
UPGRADING YOUR CAR
Again, this is whatever you want. You want the car to have lots of power, than add it. You want it closer to stock, than do that. It doesn’t matter. What does matter is the settings you use for suspension, transmission, LSD etc. These will most likely need to be changed if you set it up at a certain HP than upgrade the car to a more HP. If you look at my tunes I usually max them out. If I want a car with lower HP I will just use one rather than upgrading a car a tiny bit. However if you want something like a Viper to be easier to drift with than not upgrading the power would be a good move since it will become a beast.
Parts to change always. Forget about power and weight etc right now since that’s on you, but always change whatever you can to get full customization out of it. Meaning, fully customized transmission, fully customized suspension, LSD and any other parts that don’t affect the pp (clutch etc). You can use a less expensive suspension for example, but I don’t see why, since you could just buy the full customize one and make it weaker.
TIRE CHOICE
Comfort hard. I have been drifting for years now and these are the only tires I use. The biggest and baddest drifts will be with these tires. Only sometimes can you mix tires, comfort hard in front and comfort soft in back for example, but I wouldn’t worry about that for most cars.
CAR CHOICE
In this tutorial we are only talking about FR cars. You can drift with 4WD, but then you get into LSD settings for the front and rear etc and it becomes too crazy. The GT6 Drift Tips guide talks more about car choice. My favorite tune right now is my Nissan 350Z (Z33, US) ’03. I suggest you try that car or another to practise with and get the feel of how a car should drift first before attempting to tune your own. How I tune is I make a car like the Nissan 350z really good and basically try to replicate that feeling for every other car I make. If I find this one slides a certain way around the corners just how I want, I now have a base line for other cars to achieve.
SUSPENSION
The main difference between GT5 and GT6 is the suspension. Basically GT6 is backwards suspension from GT5. The little changes you make will also make larger changes in the cars characteristics. Remember, this whole guide has to be used with YOU, the driver, feeling the car. I can’t tell you exact figures to use since each car reacts differently.
A huge tip I have found is higher numbers in the rear means the car will spin more. Higher numbers in the front will make it more stable. We are trying to get sideways making higher rear numbers usually the way to go, but not always. After you set the suspension give it a test drive and see how it feels. If you spin out like crazy, try the exact same tune you just made, but in reverse. An example is, Toe front is -0.05 and rear Toe is 0.15. However, you spin too much so go back and try the front with 0.15 and the rear at -0.05. Same goes for everything else in suspension.
Ride height – I used to slam the cars because it looked cool, number one, and number two, it didn’t affect the cars handling that much. Now I want the car lower, but a few notches above being slammed. Usually about 5-10 from the lowest number. This just makes sure your car’s tires don’t hit the wheel wells and have room for the suspension to actually move. An easy way that I found to see if the ride height is too low is just drift around and watch the replay. If you see the car barely moving and the tires looking like they are hitting inside the wheel well then it’s too low and needs to be raised up a little. I try to keep the front and back about the same, but if the car’s weight ratio is 30/70 you might want to raise the back much higher to shift more of that weight to the front. A 50/50 weight ratio is the best, obviously.
Spring rate – Usually you base this on the ride height, but just have to set it, test drive, and make adjustments. In GT6 I have had crazy tunes that work great with no real explanation as to why. I have found most cars in GT6, setting the back suspension overall stiffer is better. The key is to make the car get into a drift, but not slide off the track. I have tested many people’s tunes that are way too stiff and the first turn I will slide off. Sliding off or spinning out is what we are trying to avoid. If you seem to be doing that a lot start lowering all your numbers.
Dampers extension – Same thing as spring rate. More in the rear than the front. Try roughly 2 numbers more. Something like 4 in the front and 6 in the rear. The extension is how high the car goes up when hitting a bump or on a turn. Since drifting is always turning basically, it’s pretty important. You don’t want the tires to hit the wheel well or the car will bump and shake. Extension numbers are almost always higher than compression dampers.
Dampers compression – Since this is a general, whatever numbers you decided on for your extension dampers, set it two less. So 4 and 6 for the extension were used we will use 2 and 4 for compression. This is how far compressed the suspension will be. Most of the time I set these pretty low.
Anti roll bars – This one is quite tricky. Usually they measure the roll from side to side when going around a corner, but in drifting you are always sideways. Ideally you want to adjust them so your car stays evenly level for the whole corner. Meaning, if you are drifting and the car feels sort of like it’s shaking the whole way then these need to be adjusted. For this quick tutorial I suggest just leave them to whatever they are stock at. Sometimes I move it one up at the front or back and drive around. If I like it better I leave it, but if not I try the opposite.
Camber – In GT6 a lot of people are saying camber is broken. Something about it just isn’t right. I have tried tunes with and without and usually without any camber is best. Sometimes I will add a little bit and it helps even out the tune. Just leave it zero until the end. If the tune isn’t working perfect when you are done, add a little bit camber to the front and back and just see if it helps.
Toe – This is the main thing. In GT5 you would need to add a lot and usually always negative. In GT6, much less is needed to drift well. The negative numbers mean the tires stick out and positive means the tires point in. Point in makes the car go in a straight line and stay there. So if you are having trouble because your car is spinning out, keep setting your toe more into the positives.
I usually set positive in the rear and negative in the front. Maybe -5 in the front and 15 in the rear. If the car spins out too much try -10 in the front. Also, lowering the rear toe into the negatives means the tires will be pointing out making the car hold the drift longer. Usually, it will spin out, which is why most of the time I stay in the positives for the rear. For all these settings the car you pick will be different. Have to just play around and test what works best for it.
LSD
This is another tricky one because it is heavily linked to your transmission. It controls how more HP you use at once. Think of it like when you hit the gas, do you want more or less power at that second? Lower HP cars will usually be set higher with higher powered cars set to lower numbers. Obviously, if you have less HP you will want to use as much as you can. What numbers to use is a thing you need to test yourself. Initial and accel are what matters when getting the power to the ground, while braking is more so only when you brake. I say set it to 60/60/5 to be safe and don’t worry about it.
If it’s not enough power go with 60/60/5 and leave it. If it’s too much power try something like 35/50/10. Think how to adjust it by hitting the gas and seeing how hard it revs. If it just revs like crazy and you aren’t really moving, you will want to lower it. If you hit the gas and it revs fairly slow and you can’t start a drift that easy, then raise it.
TRANSMISSION
This one is the toughest of everything and only the most skilled people will get it right. That being said, it is easy to get a feel of how it should be. For a totally general setup I suggest first setting the Top Speed back a few clicks. Lower HP cars just go all the way to the left while very high HP cars usually go a bit to the right. Now set the gears by moving all the gears about a quarter way back. So if the gear is in the middle move it one quarter of the way back for all of them. Now look at the graph and make sure all the spacing between the gears look even. If it is really off adjust the gear that is off so it looks even with the rest. After that, set the final gear. How much is hard to say. Move it back no matter what at first and do a lap around the track. If you step on the gas and it revs too fast or moves through all the gears too fast adjust the final gear more to the left more. To the left stretches out all the gears and to the right moves them closer together.
Basically if you hit the last gear too fast, move the final a lot. However if you are drifting around and never hit the last gear of your car, everything is fine or you can move the final gear a little more to the right. Of course you don’t ever want to rev out on the last gear (no more gears left, but need to shift) so setting a longer final gear with a higher LSD to give you the instant power works well. An example would be your car has 6 gears and you are drifting at a somewhat small track like Tsukuba. Ideally you want to be in gear 2-5 the entire time. I am literally never in gear 1 and only rarely in gear 6 if the car has low HP. Adjust your cars final gear to fit in those gears.
DRIFTING SCORE
How I used to tune in GT5 was work on a tune I like to drift with then work on getting a better score on the track. I could tell that the small changes I was making were making the car better or worse based on if my score went up or down. I drift the exact same way around the track every time so the only differences would be the tune itself. However, in GT6, the drifting score isn’t the best. I will have literally a perfect drift and the score won’t even move. I dumped the score method and just base my tune on feel now (EDIT: GT6 has been improved with updates and I now use it more to tell if a tune is good) . My best points before were in the 30,000+ range at Tsukuba, but now they are in the 20,000 range. I obviously drift the exact same way and am not sure why GT6 decided to change drift scoring so drastically.
CLOSING
I hope this mini guide gives you a good view into how to set and what to expect when tuning a drift car for Gran Turismo 6. I would really like to know what you think about it or if you have any comments/questions? If you do, leave a comment below and let me know. Happy drifting everyone!
