How to drive better in GTA 5: the fundamentals that matter
Nobody loses a race because of their car. The six fundamentals that separate a consistent driver from someone bouncing off walls.
In GTA 5, almost everyone drives on instinct: full throttle, late braking, handbrake the moment it turns too much, wall. That works for getting around. It stops working the moment someone is racing you. Here are the fundamentals, ordered by how much they pay.
1. Brake before the corner, not in it
This is mistake number one, and the most expensive. A car braking while turning is asking its tyres to do two things at once — slow down and turn — and does neither properly. The result: you run wide, you correct, you lose.
The correct sequence: brake in a straight line, release progressively, turn, get back on the throttle. Braking earlier and harder, then turning free, is almost always faster than braking late and long.
2. Look far ahead
The camera follows your car, but your eyes shouldn’t. Watching the bonnet or the car in front of you is reacting; watching the corner exit is anticipating.
In practice: at corner entry your eyes are already at the apex; at the apex they’re already at the exit. It’s the highest-return adjustment there is, it requires no upgrades, and it works from your very first session.
3. Understand weight transfer
This is the concept that explains everything else. When you brake, weight shifts forward: the front bites, the rear goes light. When you accelerate, the opposite.
What that buys you:
- A light brake on turn-in loads the front and makes the car rotate tighter.
- Getting on the power too early unloads the front and makes you run wide — that “it won’t turn” feeling almost always comes from this.
- Lifting off abruptly mid-corner breaks the rear loose. Useful when deliberate, dangerous when it isn’t.
Drifting is nothing more than this mechanism taken to the extreme — see our drift techniques.
4. Use the handbrake ten times less
The handbrake locks the rear wheels. It’s a rotation tool, not a braking tool. Used in every corner, it throws away all the speed you built and leaves the car sideways, scrubbing off pace, while the person behind you goes through.
It genuinely helps in three cases: 90-degree-plus city corners, U-turns, and hairpins. Everywhere else, clean braking is faster.
5. Choose your drivetrain deliberately
- Rear-wheel drive: more playful, rotates better on throttle, but punishes clumsiness. Excellent once you’ve got the hang of it.
- All-wheel drive: forgiving, strong on corner exit, and clearly superior in rain and off tarmac. It’s the consistency pick — and often the right pick in a chase.
- Front-wheel drive: understeery, of little competitive interest.
In degraded conditions the gap is enormous: if you want to test it, changing the weather in GTA 5 and FiveM lets you deliberately practise in the rain.
6. Controller or keyboard isn’t just preference
A keyboard sends binary steering: the wheel is at 0% or 100%. A controller stick sends an analogue value, so micro-corrections that are otherwise impossible — exactly what’s needed to hold a slide or tighten an apex.
That doesn’t make keyboard unplayable: plenty of excellent drivers use one, managing steering through short taps. But if you’re undecided and want to progress quickly at fine car control, a controller is more forgiving. Drifting in particular is far more accessible on a stick.
A practice plan that works
- Pick one car and stay in it for several sessions. You can’t learn to feel a car while swapping every game.
- Repeat the same route. Progress comes from repeating a known line, not from constant discovery.
- Work on one thing at a time. One session on braking. One on where you look. One with no handbrake at all — brutal and very effective.
- Watch your mistakes, not your lap times. Times fall on their own once the mistakes stop.
Where to test all this
These fundamentals only really show up when someone is putting you under pressure. That’s why we built Chased: short, tense 1v1 hunter-versus-hunted duels in a randomly drawn shared car — so there’s no hardware excuse. The style score rewards drifts and near-misses, and the ELO ranking measures exactly one thing: your driving.
To go further, see the best cars for police chases, the best drift cars, the fastest cars and how to lose the cops.