MXGP 26 Cornering Guide: Ruts, Berms and Heavy Steering

By Rhys Calloway · Updated October 1, 2026

Cornering is the most argued-about part of MXGP 26. “Ruts are amazing” and “cornering is awful” both appear in the first Steam reviews, sometimes in the same one. Both are true: the ruts are the best thing in the game, and the bike turns slowly when you are not in one.

How the ruts work

Track deformation is dynamic. Every rider cuts the dirt, so ruts build up lap after lap and change your lines. Nacon’s launch post says this directly, and launch-week YouTubers have run 30-minute races just to see how far the deformation goes. Three surfaces (hard pack, sand and clay), each dry or wet, change how fast that happens. The lead producer adds that in the rain a strong bike slides more, so ease the throttle on wet exits.

What this means on track:

• Early laps: ruts are shallow, so the fast line is the one you would pick on a fresh track.
• Mid race: deep ruts form on the popular lines. Getting into one is fast; getting out of one mid-corner is not.
• Late race: the AI takes several lines through corners, so the outside or a fresh inside line may have no rut at all.

Riding a rut

1. Brake earlier than feels natural. The bike does not scrub speed well mid-corner, so carrying too much in is what makes it feel like a bus.
2. Pick the rut before the corner, not in it. Commit at the entry and hold the line.
3. Let the rut turn the bike. Small steering inputs; the rut does most of the work. Several reviewers say ruts “suck you in and spit you out” when they fight them.
4. Throttle on as the bike straightens, not before. A widely liked comment under windham151’s early review notes the bike gets little drive out of a corner while it is still leaned over, and several viewers describe understeer; picking the bike up first is the workaround until physics patches change it.

With manual stand and sit enabled, rider weight changes how the bike behaves, which gives you more control in deep ruts. See the settings guide.

Berms

Players complain that berms “barely hook” and can throw you out in a random direction. Until patches change that, treat berms like shallow ruts: enter a little slower and keep the bike leaned in rather than steering hard against the wall of dirt.

If steering still feels heavy

This is the top refund reason at launch, so check your settings before blaming yourself:

• Steering response: a launch player notes you can make steering harder or softer. Try softer first.
• Deadzones: one player changed them and still found steering tiring, so treat this as the second thing to try.
• Online: heavy, unresponsive bikes in online races were partly a netcode issue that the first hotfix targets.

The full settings list is on the settings page. For the air side of riding, see the scrub and whip guide.