Paul Ricard is a track which divides fans. However in F1 2021, it is a track which has a flowing nature to it. This guide will show you the best race setup to maximise your performance around France in F1 2021.
Paul Ricard is striking to look at. The vibrant blue and red painted tarmac certainly makes it memorable. And racing around Paul Ricard in F1 2021 can certainly be fun.
It’s a track which is is extremely fast throughout, and is made up of long straights and untraditional corners. Many of the corners at the French Grand Prix have unique braking zones and out of the ordinary apexes. Making this track a tricky but fun drive.
In terms of your setup, you should look to prioritise the rear of the car, ensuring it has enough downforce to stick to the track through the fast corners. And stable enough to allow you to put the power down on the way out.
You also need to keep one eye on your tyre temperatures and overall wear, as Paul Ricard is a tyre killer. The long sustained high speed corners really work to increase your tyre temperatures during a long race.
Kicking off with the aerodynamic setup for France. You should run a lower front wing compared to your rear wing, to ensure you have good rear end stability. You don’t need a huge amount of front end downforce, and a front wing of 7 should do the trick.
Combine this with a rear wing of 9 to give you a good starting point for the rest of your setup.
Moving on to the transmission setup. Because of the predominantly fast corners around Paul Ricard, you should run your on-throttle diff setup reasonably high at 80. This will ensure the wheels keep rotating, driving you through the fast sweeping turns.
Then run a low off-throttle differential to make up for a little of the front downforce that is lost due to our lower front wing. Go for 57 here, which will allow your car to rotate well into the slower corners.
As with many of our F1 2021 car setups, our French setup follows a similar pattern of high front camber, and low amounts of toe. This just seems to be the best way to setup our suspension geometry this year, giving good rotation, stability and tyre life.
Go for -2.6 and -1.6 on the front and rear camber respectively. Then go for 0.08 and 0.2 on the toe for the best top speed potential and minimal drag.
For the suspension, F1 2021 is a killer when it comes to kerbs, so as with many of our setups so far, we’ve gone for a softer suspension setup. Go for 2 at the front and 5 at the rear for the suspension. This will help your car manage the kerbs better.
Then reverse this and go for 5 on the front anti-roll bars and 2 on the rear ARBs. This will help lessen any snap oversteer you get on acceleration.
And if there is one thing you don’t want around a fast circuit such as France, is a tendency for your car to oversteer when you apply the throttle mid corner. This suspension and anti-roll bar setup will help keep your car balanced throughout the lap.
Finally for the suspension, a ride height of 2 and 6 will set you up nicely to handle any bumps and elevation change.
For the brakes, you should look for a high brake pressure of 98%, and a brake bias of 56%. This is very much the norm across most of my car setups in F1 2021.
The brake pressure sitting just below 100% will help you stop quickly but minimising the risk of a lock up. And the brake bias should always be around 56-57% at all tracks. Any lower than this and your car will have a tendency to rotate on you under braking.
The Best F1 22 Racing WheelsAs mentioned at the start of this setup guide, the tyres can take a beating around Paul Ricard. However, Codemasters have adjusted the tyre physics in this year’s game, allowing us to run much higher pressures just like in real-world racing.
So go for 23.0 on both front tyres, and 22.7 on both rears. This will help lower the amount of front tyre wear you receive throughout a race, while being stiff enough to keep your car responsive and agile through the faster sequences.
And that will do it for our F1 2021 French setup guide. This will give you a very well balanced car, allowing you to attack the kerbs and the fast sweeping corners around Paul Ricard. The setup above is designed to allow you to drive consistently, with the car remaining stable lap after lap. This is a race setup and not designed for time trials, so it certainly wont be the fastest one lap setup.
View all of our most recent F1 2021 setups, by visiting our F1 2021 car setups page.
See you on track guys.
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