Ferrari F40 Competizione Tuning Guide — Best Setup for FH6

Class Range: S1 - S2 | Base HP: 478 | Drivetrain: RWD (Mid-engine) | Weight: 1,235 kg | Best Class: S1

The F40 Competizione is the car you buy after you've spent 100 hours in FH6 and you think you're good at driving. Then you take it out for the first time, mat the throttle in second gear, and the rear tires spontaneously convert themselves into smoke while pointing you at the nearest wall. Congratulations — you just met the most honest car in the game. The F40 doesn't have traction control. It doesn't have stability control. It barely has a muffler. What it has is a twin-turbo V8 making peak boost at exactly the RPM where the chassis is least capable of handling it, wrapped in a carbon-kevlar body that weighs about as much as a large motorcycle. It's terrifying. It's also the most rewarding car to master in the entire FH6 car list.

The Competizione is the track-focused version of the already-raw F40, with more power, less weight, and exactly zero concessions to comfort. The doors have fabric pull straps instead of handles. The windows are plexiglass. There's no carpet, no sound deadening, no radio — just a steering wheel, a gated shifter, and an engine that wants to kill you. In FH6, this translates to a car with extraordinary handling potential and absolutely no safety net. Mid-engine, RWD, turbocharged, lightweight — that combination has been writing obituaries for overconfident drivers since the 1980s. The F40 is the car that separates drivers who know what they're doing from drivers who've been relying on electronic assists.

Tuning the F40 Competizione is about finding control without neutering the car's character. You can't (and shouldn't) make it drive like a modern GT3 car. The rawness is the point. But you can make it predictable enough that the turbo spike doesn't surprise you, and the chassis communicates clearly enough that you know when you're approaching the limit. Get the tune right and the F40 becomes a scalpel — precise, responsive, and capable of lap times that embarrass much newer cars. Get it wrong and you'll be facing the wrong direction more often than the right one.

Best Tuning Setups by Class

S1 is the class where the F40's chassis can actually handle the power. At 600 hp, the car is fast enough to compete with modern supercars and light enough to destroy them in corners. The handling rating of 8.8 in S1 is elite territory. S2 builds are possible but require surgical throttle control — at 850 hp in a 1,235 kg car, you're basically piloting a rocket with a steering wheel.

Tuning Parameters — The Detail Work

Tire Pressure

Front: 28.0 PSI, Rear: 29.5 PSI. The rear tires need more pressure than the fronts to handle the combination of mid-engine weight and turbo torque. If the rear pressure is too low, the tires overheat in three laps and lose all grip. The front can run lower because there's less weight and the front tires mostly handle braking and turn-in rather than combined acceleration and cornering loads.

Gearing

Final drive: 3.55 (S1). The F40's turbos are old-school — they spool late and hit hard. Peak boost comes on around 3,800 RPM and the punch is sudden. You need longer gearing than you'd think, especially in lower gears, to manage the torque spike. First gear should top out around 95 km/h — any shorter and you'll just spin the tires. Second gear to 145, third to 190, fourth to 240, fifth to 300. Keep the engine above 4,000 RPM at all times to stay in boost, but modulate the throttle carefully when the turbos wake up.

Alignment

Camber: -2.2 front, -2.5 rear. The mid-engine layout needs aggressive rear camber, but the lightweight chassis means you don't need extreme numbers — the tires aren't fighting heavy body roll. Toe: 0.0 front, 0.2 rear. Rear toe-in is essential. Without it, the F40 will swap ends on corner entry the moment you touch the brakes. Caster: 6.5. You want steering feel and feedback, not ultra-heavy effort.

Anti-Roll Bars

Front: 20.0, Rear: 26.0. The soft front bar is crucial — the front end is light and you need it to grip. A stiff front bar will just make the car push wide everywhere. The stiffer rear bar controls the rear weight and helps the car rotate without snap-oversteer. This setup makes the F40 feel almost modern in its cornering balance while preserving the raw character.

Springs

Front: 480 lb/in, Rear: 560 lb/in. The rear springs are stiffer because they're supporting the engine, but the overall rates are moderate because the car is so light. Too-stiff springs on a lightweight car create a skipping, nervous feeling — the tires can't follow the road surface. The F40 needs compliance to work. Ride height: drop 0.8 inches. The F40 is already low. Don't slam it.

Damping

Rebound: 8.0 front, 9.0 rear. Bump: 4.5 front, 5.0 rear. The rear dampers need more control because they handle engine mass plus acceleration squat. But don't go crazy — the lightweight chassis responds to every damping change, and too much rebound makes the car feel wooden and uncommunicative. The F40's superpower is how much it tells you about what the tires are doing. Over-damping kills that feedback.

Aero

The F40's factory aerodynamics are surprisingly effective — that massive rear wing and the underbody diffuser were advanced for 1987. Keep the stock aero for S1 — it's well balanced. If you add the Forza wing and splitter, run 70% rear downforce and bias the front splitter toward cornering. Too much front aero relative to the rear creates high-speed oversteer in the F40, and trust me, you don't want that.

Brakes

Balance: 50% front, Pressure: 95%. The F40 doesn't need extreme brake pressure thanks to its light weight — you can stop this car with a stern look. The balanced bias reflects the mid-engine weight distribution. If you're locking the fronts under trail-braking, shift the bias rearward to 48%. Race brakes are non-negotiable — the stock brakes were barely adequate in 1987 and FH6's higher speeds expose that.

Differential

Accel: 55%, Decel: 50%. Lower accel lock than you'd think for a RWD car with this much power. The reason: the mid-engine layout already provides excellent rear traction, and too much diff lock makes the car understeer on corner exit. You want the diff to allow some differentiation so the car can rotate naturally under power. The 50% decel lock provides stability under braking without making the car push on entry. For aggressive track driving, you can go up to 60% accel lock, but anything beyond that dulls the F40's beautiful corner-exit rotation.

Best Race Types for the F40 Competizione

Road racing, road racing, and more road racing. The F40 is a track car through and through. It excels on circuits with a mix of medium and high-speed corners — the kind of tracks where you can use the aero and carry momentum. Playa Azul's coastal sweepers are magical in this car. It's also a monster on point-to-point road races where the raw speed and lightweight chassis let you absolutely demolish modern cars. Street scene is fine as long as the roads are smooth — the stiff suspension and low ride height make rough pavement a problem. Dirt and cross-country? Don't even think about it. This is a thoroughbred, not a rally car.

Tuning Share Codes

The F40 tuning community is small but dedicated. Fewer people tune the F40 because fewer people can drive it fast — it's a self-selecting group. If you've got a tune that tames the turbo spike without killing the car's character, drop the code. I'm particularly interested in any S2 setups that are actually driveable for more than three laps without needing new rear tires.

Common Tuning Mistakes

Fighting the car's nature. The biggest mistake is trying to make the F40 drive like a modern supercar. It won't. You can add all the downforce and traction control you want — this car was born in the 80s when "safety" was a suggestion and "turbo lag" was a lifestyle. Embrace the rawness. Tune for predictability, not for comfort. The car should feel alive, not sedated.

Too much rear camber. The F40's double-wishbone rear suspension doesn't need crazy camber numbers. The lightweight chassis means the suspension doesn't compress as much as a heavier car, so the dynamic camber gain is different. -2.5 is the sweet spot. Beyond -3.0 and you're losing straight-line traction for no reason — the inside of the rear tire lifts on acceleration.

Short gearing to "fix" turbo lag. The instinct is to shorten the gears so you're always in boost. This backfires because shorter gears mean the turbo spike happens at lower road speeds where the tires have less grip. Long gearing spreads the torque delivery over more speed, which gives the tires a chance to hook up. Long gears, throttle control, and patience on corner exit.

Running no rear toe-in. There are people who swear you can run zero rear toe on the F40 for maximum straight-line speed. Don't listen to them. The 0.2 degrees of rear toe-in is what keeps the back end behind you when you stab the brakes. Removing it saves maybe 2 km/h of top speed and costs you the car's entire rear end on the first hard braking zone. Not worth it.

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