DIRT 5 Gymkhana: 5 tips to dominate the stunt racing event

The point of racing games is to go fast, right? Not always. DIRT 5 may want you to fly through the mud and dust most of the time, but Gymkhana events ask for precise control around, through, and between obstacles to rack up points.

Be it Career Mode or Playgrounds-created events, Gymkhana tests your driving skill and creativity in a completely different way. You are asked to rack up points by drifting through gates, hitting 360-spins, and sliding around obstacles.

This is not a familiar task for many racing gamers, so how can you get the most out of your Gymkhana runs?

We’ve teamed up with Codemasters and the terrific ConnerSpeed6 to bring you the key tips and tricks to mastering Gymkhana.

Perfection lies in planning

When you get into a Gymkhana event the temptation is to go diving headfirst in and see how many points you can rack up. While that is the fun, it’s far from ideal.

Thankfully, content creator and DIRT 5 expert ConnerSpeed6 was able to give us the low-down.

“What I personally do, is I like to hop into the event itself, cruise around it, get my bearings, and then I can plot out a route that I think will work and is the smoothest and will keep the car in a nice flowing pattern.” Said Conner.

In his latest video, ConnerSpeed6 takes DIRT 5 players through his tips for maximising your Gymkhana route.

This is particularly necessary in Career Mode, where the Gymkhana arenas are usually built with a path in mind for the driver to take.

Knowing the course and where you can transition from one drift into another is crucial to racking up big scores and collecting all those stamps.

Turn off assists

This might be a scary one for some players, but while the assists help with control in races, they can hinder your ability to slide and drift in Gymkhana.

Things like traction control, stability control, and especially automatic gears can really play havoc with your ability to push the car right to the edge of adhesion and will limit your ability to score points in Gymkhana.

You can get to these in the pause menu and always turn them back on for races.

Limit your counter-steering

This is the biggest takeaway from Conner’s tips for us!

“Get the car turned in, get the backend going around, and then just simply tap the turn in and let the wheels go back straight. As soon as you counter-steer the car is going to automatically flick itself to the opposite direction.”

The cars you use for Gymkhana are ultra-nimble and will change directions very, very quickly. Part of DIRT 5’s physics is that heavy corrections to slides get punished.

This is something every player needs to be aware of. Where in other games you could counter and it would slowly bring you out of your drift, in DIRT 5 a big counter-steer will have you in the wall or off your skid pad so fast you won’t have a chance to catch it again.

“It’s all delicate steering input.” Said Conner, “Less is more.”

Throttle feathering & e-brake

Controlling your power with a game pad can be tricky, but mastering the throttle feather is vital in DIRT 5’s Gymkhana events.

Just like the steering input, you want your throttle control to be precise. Keeping the revs high and the power available will help your flow through the course. That means pulsing the trigger to keep the power up rather than just mashing the trigger down or trying to hold it at a point.

“Power band is everything in these events.” Says Conner, who employs some rev-banging in lower gears to keep the car flying around the Gymkhana courses.

Of course, a lot of power and high revs can make things tricky when tight-turns and donuts are needed. That’s where the second part of this tip comes in.

The e-brake, or handbrake, is a highly effective tool for flicking the car, and one you can use to correct any understeer within a drift.

C-c-c-combo

The final tip is about the actual goal of the event, points! Now that you know how to control your car like a pro, how can you maximise your points? It’s all about combos.

You know you’ve triggered the score for an obstacle if you get it to shoot confetti, if you don’t see that you did something wrong! So slide through the drift gates for a cool 500, but then chain that with a 360-spin for 1,000 and a quick donut for a max of 2,000.

Conner’s video shows him racking up a quick 8,000 points in a matter of seconds thanks to comboing obstacles.

This comes back to his first tip, of planning a route. The main reason is that you know where you can transition to different obstacles.

Remember, if you smash those pink boxes mid-combo or during a drift you’ll also get a bonus of 100 points per box, which can make the difference between 3 stamps and a new PB or missing out.

Want more DIRT 5 tips? Look out for the next part in our series, where ConnerSpeed6 takes us through key tips for perfecting your Ice Breaker performance.

You can support ConnerSpeed6 by subscribing to his YouTube channel or on Patreon.

If you haven’t got it already, you can buy DIRT 5 NOW at all good retailers on Xbox Series X|S, PS5, and PC.

If you haven’t upgraded to next-gen consoles yet then don’t worry, DIRT 5 is available on Xbox One and PS4, and comes with a free upgrade to next-gen should you pick up the console for Christmas. Just remember discless consoles will require digital entitlement to upgrade.