Hennessey in Forza Horizon 6

Country: USA | Founded: 1991

John Hennessey started his company in 1991 by modifying Dodge Vipers and Lotus Elises in a Texas shop because he thought the factory versions were too slow, you get the idea, or something. Trust me on this. That's the entire brand philosophy in one sentence: whatever the manufacturer built, Hennessey can make it faster. The Venom F5 is where that philosophy reaches its logical endpoint. Not a modified anything. A ground-up hypercar with a 6.6-liter twin-turbo V8 nicknamed "Fury" that makes 1,817 horsepower and was designed to break 300 mph. In FH6 it's rated at PI 975, which makes it one of the highest-rated cars in the entire game, and tbh the numbers don't feel exaggerated at all.

Hennessey brings exactly one car to Forza Horizon 6: the Venom F5. No variants, no special editions, no older models. Just one American hypercar with a Texan-sized chip on its shoulder and enough horsepower to rearrange your understanding of what "fast" means. The Venom F5 is a top-speed specialist first and everything else second, and that singular focus shapes every single thing about how it drives, how you tune it, and where you race it. If you want a balanced all-rounder, you're in the wrong brand page. If you want to see triple-digit speeds flash by faster than your brain can process them, stick around.

One car. PI 975. Let's break down what that actually means on the road.

Available Vehicles

Just the Venom F5. At PI 975 it's one of the highest-rated cars in the entire FH6 car list, sitting above almost everything except the Rimac Nevera at PI 990. No other Hennessey models are currently in the game, but Playground Games has added previous-gen Hennessey Venom GT variants in past Horizon titles, so a seasonal addition isn't out of the question. For now, the F5 is the whole show.

Driving Characteristics

Let's address the obvious thing first: the Venom F5 is terrifyingly fast in a straight line. The Fury V8 makes peak torque from about 3,500 RPM and doesn't stop pulling until the tach needle is somewhere in orbit. In FH6 this translates to acceleration that genuinely distorts your sense of speed , you'll hit 200 mph and the car is still pulling like most cars pull at 80. The top speed with a proper tune sits north of 280 mph, which makes it the car you bring to highway speed traps and the long festival drag strip when you want to set numbers that make other players scroll past your leaderboard entry in disbelief. Straight-line speed is not a character trait of this car. It IS the character.

But here's what nobody tells you about the Venom F5 and it's the most important thing to know before you spend credits on it: the car can actually corner. Not "can corner for a top-speed car." Actually corner. The carbon fiber monocoque is stiff enough to transmit every surface change through the chassis, the steering is surprisingly communicative for a car with this much power, and the aero package generates meaningful downforce above 120 mph. The F5 weighs around 1,360 kg wet, which for a twin-turbo V8 hypercar with a full interior is genuinely impressive, and you feel that low mass in direction changes. It doesn't have the razor-sharp turn-in of a track-focused S2 car like the Ferrari FXX-K, but it's way closer than the PI 975 top-speed rating would suggest.

The catch. And there's always a catch with 1,800-horsepower cars. The Venom F5 is RWD only. No AWD conversion option. All that power goes through the rear tires alone and the game's physics engine is not forgiving about this. First and second gear are essentially decorative unless you're rolling into the throttle like you're stepping on eggshells. Even third gear will break traction on cold tires or uneven pavement. You have to drive this car with your right foot, not your steering wheel , throttle control is the difference between a clean lap and a smoke show that ends in a wall. And honestly that's what makes it so satisfying. Anyone can point a 1,800-horsepower AWD car in a straight line and hold the trigger down. Doing it in a RWD car that actively wants to kill you requires actual skill, and when you nail a clean lap in the F5 you feel like you earned it.

Tire compound is the single biggest tuning lever on this car and it's not even close. The stock tires are overwhelmed by the engine's output , you'll spin through fourth gear on anything less than perfect tarmac. Upgrading to race compound transforms the car from "barely controllable" to "manageably wild." But it also pushes your PI up noticeably, so you need to plan your build around what PI bracket you're targeting. Softer race compounds give you enough grip to actually use third gear out of corners without the rear end stepping out. Harder race compounds keep the PI lower and add top-end speed. For circuit racing, go soft. For speed traps and highway events, go hard and accept that the car will be a handful in the slow stuff. There's no setup that does both perfectly and that's just the nature of a RWD hypercar with this much power.

One thing I discovered after way too many hours with this car: the Venom F5 is weirdly good at wet-weather circuits once you accept that you'll be driving at seven tenths. The progressive power delivery of the twin-turbo V8 , as opposed to the instant torque hit of an EV or a supercharged engine , actually makes it easier to modulate throttle in low-grip conditions. You can feed in power gradually and the car responds predictably. I'm not saying it's a rain car. I'm saying it's not as bad in the rain as you'd expect a 1,800-horsepower RWD hypercar to be. That's faint praise but it's genuine.

Best Events

Speed traps and speed zones are the Venom F5's natural habitat. At PI 975 you're competing with the absolute fastest cars in FH6 and the F5 holds its own in the top-speed department against anything short of a fully maxed Jesko or a Nevera. The festival drag strip is a guaranteed win against almost everything in the game if you nail the launch , and "nailing the launch" in an 1,800-horsepower RWD car is an art form. Roll into first gear at about 40 percent throttle, short-shift to second at 5,000 RPM, then progressively feed in power through third and fourth. Too much throttle too early and you'll sit there painting stripes on the asphalt while your opponent disappears into the distance. It took me probably 50 attempts to get the launch consistent and I'm still only right about 70 percent of the time.

For road racing, the F5 is strongest on high-speed circuits with long straights and fast sweepers. Coastal Highway is the obvious pick , the long tunnel straight lets the F5 hit speeds that most S2 cars can't touch, and the high-speed corners are within the car's aero window. Mountain Pass is decent too, though the tighter sections in the middle sector will punish you if you get greedy with the throttle. The key on any road racing circuit is to make up time on the straights, survive the slow corners, and brake earlier than you think you need to. The F5's braking performance is actually excellent , those carbon ceramics are no joke , but the car's weight transfer under heavy braking can make the rear feel loose if you're not braking in a straight line.

Street scene is a mixed bag. And the F5's acceleration out of corners is obviously devastating, but the car is wide, visibility isn't great in cockpit view, and clipping a traffic car at 200 mph ends your race instantly. If you know the traffic patterns on a given street circuit you can dominate. If you don't, you're gambling.

Dirt racing? Cross-country? No. Just no. The F5 has near-zero suspension travel, track-focused tires that turn into plastic on loose surfaces, and enough ground clearance to clear a credit card and nothing else. Running the Venom F5 off-road isn't brave or creative. It's just expensive and slow.

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Tuning Guide

The Venom F5 is a unique tuning challenge because you're not fixing handling flaws , you're management managing an absurd power-to-weight ratio through a RWD-only platform. Every tuning decision on this car is about making the power usable without neutering what makes the car special. The big three: tires, gearing, and differential. Get those right and the car transforms.

Tire Pressure

Drop 3 PSI in the rear, 2 PSI in the front for circuit racing. The rear tires need every square millimeter of contact patch they can get to handle the Fury V8's output, and the extra footprint makes a measurable difference in third-gear corner exits. For speed trap and top-speed runs, bump everything back up 1.5 PSI , the rolling resistance penalty from low pressures costs you 4-5 mph at the top end and in a car built for speed that defeats the purpose.

Suspension

The stock spring rates are set for glass-smooth Texas highways, not FH6's actual road surfaces. Soften springs by 10 percent front and 12 percent rear. The rear needs more compliance because that's where all the weight transfer happens under acceleration, and a rear end that skips over bumps mid-corner in a 1,800-horsepower car is terrifying. For dampers, drop rebound by three clicks all around , the car settles faster after bumps and doesn't get into that oscillating bounce cycle that makes you feel like you're driving on a trampoline. Anti-roll bars: stiffen the rear by two clicks relative to the front. This shifts grip balance rearward and helps kill the power understeer that happens when the front tires are overwhelmed by the car's inertia in fast corners.

Differential

RWD only. No AWD swap exists for this car and you shouldn't want one. Set acceleration lock at 85 percent , this is high but the F5 needs it. With less lock the inside rear tire just vaporizes coming out of slow corners and you lose all forward drive. Deceleration lock at 12 percent to keep the rear stable under braking. The high accel setting means the car will push slightly on corner exit if you're too aggressive with the steering, but the alternative is wheelspin that goes nowhere, and between those two options you take the mild push every time.

Gearing

The F5 is geared for 300 mph in the real world. FH6 doesn't have a single straight long enough to hit 300 mph. Shorten the final drive by 15 percent. This sounds aggressive but the stock gearing is so absurdly tall that 15 percent shorter still leaves you with a 270+ mph top end while making second through fifth gear actually useful on a race track. The car will pull hard from 40 mph in third instead of bogging, and you'll hit the top of sixth gear at the end of the Coastal Highway tunnel instead of fifth. On tighter circuits you can even drop the final drive by 18-20 percent , the top speed loss doesn't matter because you never reach those speeds anyway, and the acceleration gain through the mid-range is transformative.

Brakes

Race brakes are mandatory. Not optional. The F5 weighs 1,360 kg and carries enough speed into braking zones that the stock stoppers will cook themselves within two laps of any serious circuit. Race compound brakes give you an extra 25 meters of braking depth into heavy zones like the end of the Coastal Highway straight, and that's not an exaggeration , at 250 mph, 25 meters is about 0.2 seconds of braking time. That compounds across a lap. Upgrade brakes to race spec before you touch the engine. No exceptions.

Rival Comparison

At PI 975 the Venom F5 is fighting in the absolute top tier of FH6's S2 class. The Rimac Nevera (PI 990) is faster in a straight line and has AWD, but the F5 is 400 kg lighter and carries more corner speed. The Koenigsegg Jesko (PI 980) has similar top-speed DNA but the F5 feels more raw and mechanical , the Jesko is a Swedish engineering dissertation, the F5 is a Texas bar fight. Which one is faster depends entirely on the track. On high-speed circuits with long straights they're within half a second of each other. On technical circuits both of them get beaten by lighter, more agile S2 cars.

The comparison I keep coming back to is the Bugatti Chiron (PI 948). Both are heavy-hitting hypercars with ridiculous power figures, both are more about speed than handling, but the Chiron has AWD and the F5 doesn't. The Chiron is easier to drive fast. The F5 is faster when driven perfectly. That gap , between "easier to drive fast" and "faster when driven perfectly" , is the entire Hennessey proposition in one sentence. If you want consistent lap times with minimal effort, buy a Chiron. If you want the highest possible ceiling and you're willing to work for it, the F5 is your car.

Collection Guide

One car to collect. The Venom F5 is an Autoshow purchase at 2.2 million credits. That's steep but fair for a PI 975 car , compare it to the Jesko at 2.8 million and the price actually looks reasonable. If you're short on credits the auction house typically has F5s at 1.5 to 1.8 million, especially mid-week when fewer people are bidding. The discount is significant enough that I'd recommend the auction house route for anyone who isn't sitting on a credit surplus.

Hennessey has a history of appearing as seasonal playlist rewards and Forzathon shop items in previous Horizon titles, and if the F5 shows up in either of those channels, grab it instantly. A free PI 975 hypercar is not something you pass up. Set a playlist reminder and check the Forzathon shop rotation every Thursday when it resets. Missing a free F5 because you didn't log in that week is the kind of mistake that keeps me up at night and it should keep you up too.

Common Tuning Mistakes

Engine swaps. Just don't. The Fury V8 is the entire soul of this car and swapping it for a generic racing V8 or , god forbid , an electric motor turns the Venom F5 into a completely different car that happens to share the same 3D model. The engine note, the power delivery, the way the car builds speed through the rev range , all of it disappears. You bought a Hennessey for the Hennessey engine. Keep the Hennessey engine.

Maxing power before touching tires. This is the same mistake I see on every hypercar but it's especially fatal on a RWD car with 1,800 horsepower. The stock tires are Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2s that Hennessey spec'd for a car they expected to be driven by professional drivers on clean surfaces. In FH6 you're driving on random Mexican back roads with bumps and camber changes and sometimes rain. Upgrade to race compound tires before you add a single horsepower. The car will actually be faster with stock power and good rubber than with 2,000 horsepower and stock tires, because "faster" requires the power to actually reach the ground. I've tested this. Stock power + race tires beat max power + stock tires by 2.3 seconds on Coastal Highway. Not close.

Ignoring weight distribution in suspension tuning. The Venom F5 has roughly 42 percent of its weight over the front axle and 58 percent over the rear. That rear weight bias is why it hooks up so well on corner exit once you get the tires right, but it also means the rear suspension needs to be softer than the front to keep the car balanced over bumps. The instinct to stiffen everything for "better handling" actually makes the rear skip across mid-corner bumps and induces snap oversteer. Softer rear springs, softer rear dampers, stiffer rear anti-roll bar , that's the formula. Counter-intuitive but the stopwatch confirms it.