F1 25: Brake Bias and Differential Explained: How To Optimse

Your brake bias and on throttle differential are two of the setup options you have in F1 25 that differ from the others. Unlike the rest of your car setup, you can adjust the brake bias and on throttle differential dynamically during a race.

But what do these two setup options do in F1 25? And why would you want to adjust them mid-race? In this F1 25 setup guide, I’ll run through everything you need to know about optimising your brake bias and differential setup.

What does the brake bias do?

Your brake bias affects how much braking force is sent to the front and how much to the rear. If you opt for a 50% brake bias, even amounts of braking force are sent to the front and rear brakes.

This sounds like the optimal route, however, when you brake heavily in F1 25, the weight of your car shifts forward. With more weight over the front axel of your car, the front tyres have more grip than the rear. For this reason, sending more braking force to the front of your car is always beneficial. Normally, a setting of around 55% is ideal for many tracks.

You may want to have a more neutral or rearward brake bias when the braking zones aren’t as heavy. Shorter braking zones can benefit from a brake bias as low as 51-52%. This is because the weight balance is much more neutral through this style of braking zone.

Brake bias example

Take the Bahrain circuit as an example. Turn 1 is a very heavy braking zone, where you’ll be slowing the car right down to second gear from high speed. For this corner, we would want the brake bias to be set to 55-56%. This allows the front tyres to have more braking performance while the weight is at the front of the car.

Then, at Bahrain, as you enter the second sector, turn 5 is incredibly fast. For this corner, a brake bias of around 52-53% can be ideal. We aren’t braking as heavily, so keeping the bias more neutral is perfect.

Changing the brake bias mid-race

With the examples above, its easy to see why adjusting your brake bias mid-lap can unlock extra performance. You will often see real-world Formula 1 drivers making multiple brake bias adjustments each lap.

In F1 25, it is beneficial to do the same thing. You can adjust your brake bias at any point while on track using the MFD. This can be done with a controller, and in my recommended F1 25 controller settings, I recommend setting the brake bias adjustment to your analogue stick for easy access. If you are racing with a wheel, you can configure the brake bias to any input on your wheel for easier adjustments.

What does the differential do?

Your on-throttle differential in F1 25, is a setup option which adjusts how closely the rear wheels spin at the same speed.

Open differential

An open differential (a lower setting), will allow the rear wheels to spin more freely of one another. This will make the car more stable under acceleration, however, it can make you slower out of corners.

Locked differential

A more locked differential (higher settings) will force both rear wheels to spin at the same speed. This will give you a big push when accelerating out of corners. However, it comes with the downside of making it easier to spin your rear wheels and oversteer.

The reason for this is that during a corner, your wheels rotate at different speeds. The inside wheel doesn’t travel as far as the outside wheel, so spins slower. If you lock your differential and force them to rotate at the same speed, you’ll force the inside wheel to break traction, leading to wheel spin.

When to use locked vs open differential

Much like the brake bias, where slower corners and faster corners benefit from different setups. The differential is also very similar. However, it mainly affects your car’s behaviour mid to late corner.

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For faster corners, where traction and wheel spin aren’t as much of a threat, much like turns 5, 6 and 7 at Bahrain, higher on throttle differential is beneficial. This is becuase a higher differential will allow for the best push out of the corner from both rear wheels.

At slower corners, where it is much easier to wheel spin, a more open differential is better.

Putting everything into practice

As an example, I’m using Bahrain once again. As I approach turn 1, I would increase the brake bias to around 55-57%, and lower the on throttle differential.

Then after turn 4, I would lower the brake bias down to 53-53%, and increase the on throttle differential closer to 100%. Once again, before turn 8, I would increase the brake bias to around 54-55%, and lower the differential again, ready for the exit.

As you can see, this is a lot of changes across a short amount of time. This is one of the key reasons why its incredibly important to make the changes accessible.

How to adjust brake bias and differential mid-race in F1 25

Both of these setup options can be configured before every session in the car setup screen. When you do hit the track, you can adjust both the brake bias an differential from either your MFD screen, or via buttons on your controller or racing wheel.

Adjusting via MFD

The MFD menu can be accessed by pressing the corresponding button on your controller. This is normally “B” on an Xbox controller or “O” on a PlayStation controller. Pressing this will bring up the MFD and show the options for both brake bias and differential.

You then use your directional buttons to increase or decrease both settings.

Adjusting via wheel or controller buttons

I like to make car setup changes as easy as possible mid race rather than scrolling through on screen menus. for this reason, I like to map the brake bias and differential to buttons on my racing wheel or the analogue stick on my controller.

This can be done in the F1 25 control button mapping screen. Read our full tutorial on how to set up a racing wheel or controller in F1 25.

On a controller, you can map the increase and decrease brake bias to up and down on the right analogue stick. Then map your right and left analogue stick inputs to increasing and decreasing your differential. This lets you make a quick adjustment by simply flicking the analogue stick and not using your MFD.

On a racing wheel, it can be just as easy to map these inputs. They can be assigned to rotary encoders or individual buttons on your steering wheel using the same method.

Use an optimised F1 25 car setup

If you want a faster car setup, you can check out our F1 25 pro car setup pack. This pack includes multiple car setups for every race, which have been created by some of the fastest league racing drivers in F1 25. This pack also includes optimal strategies for the race, qualifying and tyre strategy, for every single track.

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Conclusion

Hopefully this setup guide for F1 25 will have helped with understanding what the brake bias and differential do, and how important they can both be during a race.

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Article written by Rich

Founder of SimRacingSetups.com

Rich is the founder, F1 car setup creator and content writer for SimRacingSetups. With over a decade of experience as a graphic designer, marketing director, competitive sim racer and avid motorsport fan, Rich founded SimRacingSetup.com to share his passion and knowledge of sim racing and Formula 1 with other sim racers. Regularly writes for sim racing website SimRaceReviews.com

View all articles written by Rich