Contracting orbits in Outer space

We show that strongly contracting geodesics in Outer space project to parameterized quasigeodesics in the free factor complex. This result provides a converse to a theorem of Bestvina–Feighn, and is used to give conditions for when a subgroup of \({{\,\mathrm{Out}\,}}(\mathbb {F})\) has a quasi-isometric orbit map into the free factor complex. It also allows one to construct many new examples of strongly contracting geodesics in Outer space.