SwisserAI LogoSwisserAI
handling.meta field · Aero and body

fInitialDragCoeff

Drag coefficient

fInitialDragCoeff is the air resistance of a vehicle. The game multiplies it by 0.0001 and by the square of the speed, which makes it the field that decides where a car stops accelerating.

Unit
× 0.0001
gtamods calls it Cd ÷ 10
Vanilla median
9.25
Tezeract 2.0, Dozer 300
Drag at 180 km/h
2.3 m/s²
for the median car
Applies
live
SetVehicleHandlingFloat

Try it on a real car

Halve the drag and the green line jumps up until the gearing catches it. Double it and the car cannot even reach its last gear.

Super
Drag coefficientfInitialDragCoeff
140
stock 7.80

Air resistance, grows with speed squared. The one number that caps top speed without touching the gears.

Open this in the editor
Top speed
193km/h
in gear 6 of 6
0-100
4.20s
1/4 mile
12.71s

Gear ladder

  1. 158
  2. 298
  3. 3138
  4. 4176
  5. 5202
  6. 6213
193 km/h

Redline in top gear 213 km/h. Drag stops the Adder 20 km/h before that. Measured fully upgraded: 203 km/h.

The formula

Drag deceleration
fInitialDragCoeff × 0.0001 × v² (v in m/s)
Rolling loss
0.003 × v, fitted on 617 cars
Top speed
where wheel force in the gear in use equals drag + rolling
Median car at 180 km/h
9.25 × 0.0001 × 50² = 2.3 m/s²

Because the loss grows with speed squared, small changes matter a lot at the top end and hardly at all in town. A car with 9.25 loses 2.3 m/s² at 180 km/h and only 0.6 m/s² at 90 km/h.

Mass is not in the formula. In this engine drag is an acceleration applied to the archetype, so a heavy and a light car with the same coefficient slow down the same.

Values in the game

Most cars sit between 6 and 13. Electric supers go as low as 2, and drift cars are set high on purpose to cap their speed, the RT3000 drift version runs 26.

Computed from the 608 vanilla cars that have a public measurement, one entry per handling name. Motorcycles (49) are kept out of the chart; they run 6.58 to 23.75.

608 vanilla cars
median 9.25 · 80 % sit between 6 and 13
42240

Bars cover the 1st to 99th percentile. Extremes: 2 (Tezeract) to 300 (Dozer).

By vehicle class
  1. Vans · 226 6 15
  2. Industrial · 114 8 300
  3. Coupes · 195.5 8 26
  4. SUVs · 455.75 8 14.35
  5. Sedans · 446 8 26
  6. Emergency · 314 8.5 12
  7. Sports Classics · 495.9 8.675 26
  8. Super · 602 9.435 12.5
  9. Muscle · 816 9.65 26
  10. Compacts · 148 9.9 11.6
  11. Commercial · 154 10 13
  12. Service · 104 10 15
  13. Sports · 1176.5 10 29.75
  14. Off-Road · 577.75 11 30
  15. Military · 124 13 40.5
  16. Utility · 215.8 15 56

Five cars from the bottom to the top

  1. Lowest
    2
    Tezeract
    Super
  2. 25th percentile
    8
    Injection
    Off-Road
  3. Median
    9.25
    Vagner
    Super
  4. 75th percentile
    10.75
    Tulip M-100
    Muscle
  5. Highest
    300
    Dozer
    Industrial

The clean way to add top speed

Lowering drag raises top speed without touching the gears, so the launch and every shift stay exactly where they were. That makes it the least destructive top-end change in the file.

The limit is the redline. Once the force line crosses drag beyond the last gear's redline, the car sits on the limiter and this field stops helping. Then fInitialDriveMaxFlatVel has to move too.

Going the other way is just as useful. Drift and roleplay servers that want a car to feel fast but stay under 200 km/h raise drag instead of shortening the gears, which keeps the pull out of corners intact.

client.lua
SetVehicleHandlingFloat(veh, 'CHandlingData', 'fInitialDragCoeff', 7.0)

Related fields

Numbers on this page come from the vanilla handling files of GTA V (one entry per handling name, 55 fields catalogued) and from a speed model checked against 617 measured top speeds. Published 2026-09-08. Not affiliated with Rockstar Games or Cfx.re.