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handling.meta field · Engine

fInitialDriveForce

Drive force

fInitialDriveForce is the force the engine puts on the wheels per kilogram of vehicle. The game multiplies it by the gear ratio, so it decides how hard a car pulls out of a corner far more than what it reaches on a straight.

Unit
force per kg
about 10.9 m/s² per 1.0 in a 1:1 gear
Vanilla median
0.28
80 % of cars between 0.16 and 0.37
Applies
live
SetVehicleHandlingFloat, no respawn
Engine upgrade
× 1.2
some cars 1.4 or 1.8

Try it on a real car

Drag the slider and watch which number moves. 0-100 reacts at once. Top speed follows more slowly: drag rises with speed squared, so doubling the force adds about a fifth to the top speed and cuts the 0-100 time almost in half.

Sport
Drive forcefInitialDriveForce
0.051.2
stock 0.260

How hard the engine pushes per kilogram. Roughly 10 m/s² of acceleration per 1.0 in first gear, before drag and grip limits.

Open this in the editor
Top speed
173km/h
in gear 5 of 5
0-100
5.88s
1/4 mile
14.35s

Gear ladder

  1. 152
  2. 291
  3. 3128
  4. 4166
  5. 5193
173 km/h

Redline in top gear 193 km/h. Drag stops the Sultan 20 km/h before that. Measured fully upgraded: 187 km/h.

What the game does with it

Acceleration at the wheels is the drive force times a gear multiplier times a torque curve. In our model, checked against 617 measured top speeds and 155 drag races, the multiplier is 10.9 m/s² per unit of force, then times the ratio of the gear in use. First gear on a six-speed is 3.33, top gear is 0.9.

Wheel acceleration
fInitialDriveForce × 10.9 × gear ratio × torque(rpm)
Torque curve
1.0 up to 80 % rpm, falling to 0.55 at redline
Launch limit
≤ fTractionCurveMax × g × (1.0 all-wheel, 0.55 two-wheel drive)
Engine upgrade
× 1.2 at level 100, × 1.4 at 200, × 1.8 at 400 (Pariah)
Off-road flags
HF_OFFROAD_ABILITIES +10 %, HF_OFFROAD_ABILITIES_X2 +20 %

The launch limit is why a huge value stops helping. A rear-wheel-drive Sultan with 2.2 of grip can only use about 11.9 m/s² off the line. Above roughly 0.33 of drive force in first gear it just spins.

The community rule of thumb from gtamods, torque in Nm divided by kerb weight in kg, lands in the same range. A 500 Nm car weighing 1,500 kg gives 0.33.

Values in the game

Sports and super cars cluster between 0.30 and 0.45. The Nebula Turbo drift version tops the list at 0.725, the Lawn Mower sits at 0.05.

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 0.1 to 0.82.

608 vanilla cars
median 0.28 · 80 % sit between 0.159 and 0.37
0.10.410.71

Bars cover the 1st to 99th percentile. Extremes: 0.05 (Lawn Mower) to 0.725 (Nebula Turbo (Drift)).

By vehicle class
  1. Service · 100.12 0.13 0.33
  2. Military · 120.06 0.14 0.3
  3. Industrial · 110.11 0.14 0.21
  4. Utility · 210.05 0.15 0.608
  5. Vans · 220.1 0.16 0.32
  6. Commercial · 150.11 0.16 0.32
  7. Compacts · 140.1 0.23 0.32
  8. Sedans · 440.1 0.237 0.718
  9. Off-Road · 570.12 0.25 0.716
  10. Emergency · 310.12 0.254 0.362
  11. SUVs · 450.11 0.26 0.338
  12. Coupes · 190.21 0.27 0.713
  13. Sports Classics · 490.16 0.283 0.725
  14. Muscle · 810.17 0.29 0.72
  15. Sports · 1170.15 0.33 0.716
  16. Super · 600.138 0.356 0.42

Five cars from the bottom to the top

  1. Lowest
    0.05
    Lawn Mower
    Utility
  2. 25th percentile
    0.2
    Schafter LWB
    Sports
  3. Median
    0.28
    Faction
    Muscle
  4. 75th percentile
    0.33
    ZR350
    Sports
  5. Highest
    0.725
    Nebula Turbo (Drift)
    Sports Classics

What it does to top speed

Top speed is where wheel force in the gear in use equals air drag plus rolling resistance. Doubling the force doubles that wheel force, but drag grows with speed squared, so the crossing point moves by the square root of the change, not by the change itself. On the Sultan, 0.26 to 0.52 takes the top speed from 173 to 206 km/h and the 0-100 time from 5.9 to 3.3 s. The redline of the last gear caps it after that.

If the car needs more top end, lower fInitialDragCoeff or raise fInitialDriveMaxFlatVel. If it needs a stronger launch and pull out of corners, this is the field.

Applying it on a server

The value is read live. Change it in a running server with a client-side native and the car reacts without a respawn.

client.lua, this vehicle only
local veh = GetVehiclePedIsIn(PlayerPedId(), false)
SetVehicleHandlingFloat(veh, 'CHandlingData', 'fInitialDriveForce', 0.40)

For a permanent change, ship a handling.meta with the same handlingName in your own resource. The guide explains the resource layout and the load order.

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.