Portimao in Portugal is the first DLC track to be released for F1 2021, and it's an extremely fun track to drive. This setup guide will run you through our recommended race setup.
The first of the three DLC tracks for F1 2021 have landed, and it’s Portimao in Portugal. And boy was this a tricky one to create a setup for.
We have got a new track which is hard enough on its own. We’ve got to find a completely fresh setup approach, as both the setups on the time trial leaderboard and the preset setups just didn’t work for me at all.
But then we’ve also got the newly released F1 2021 car performance patch, which dropped in this same update. This update has slowed the cars down by a couple of seconds.
But getting back to the track itself. Portimao itself is a super tricky but very fun track to drive it’s fast sweeping there’s huge elevation change. You’ve got to ensure your car is set up perfectly otherwise, the rear end will step out at every opportunity.
So jumping straight into the setup.
I’ve gone with an aero setup of 7 and 8. This is a little lower than I was running during my testing.
But I found that if you run much higher than this, you’re going to have so much drag down that really long back straight. And you’re just going to find it almost impossible to pull overtakes during the race.
Moving on to the transmission I’ve gone with a fairly balanced on-throttle diff of 72%. A lot of the time trial setups were running super high on throttle differential setups, and so were the preset car setups. But for me, this just didn’t work especially out of some of the slower corners.
I’ve also gone with an off-throttle diff of around 55%, which will help with a little more rotation at a slower speed.
For the suspension geometry, I’ve gone for -2.8 and -1.7 on the camber, and then 0.06 and 0.29 on the toe.
This is a little more rear camber and rear toe than I normally run, but I had to just to get a little bit of stability in the car. The conservative nature of this suspension geometry setup will help both tyre wear and overall stability.
Moving on to the suspension I’ve gone with a soft suspension setup of 3 and 2.
A little bit stiffer at the front and a little bit softer at the rear. Again this is designed to help with stability in the rear.
And then I’ve gone for an anti-roll bar setup of 7 and 2. This is designed entirely to keep that rear end in check. If you switch this around and run a soft front anti-roll bar and a stiffer rear anti-roll bar, you’ll be losing that rear end almost in every corner, so it isn’t recommended if you’re after a stable car setup.
Then go for a ride height of 3 and 7.
For the brakes, I’ve gone with 95% brake pressure for good braking performance and 57% brake bias.
The Best F1 23 Racing WheelsYou do need to run your brake bias quite high otherwise under braking, the rear end does have a tendency to overtake the front of the car. That is definitely not what you require around Portimao, as you’ll often be braking whilst turning slightly. Braking stability is crucial.
Then I’ve gone for high tire pressures all round of 24.6 on both fronts and 23.1 on both rears. This is just to help the car stick to the road and keep everything in check.
And that’ll do it for our Portimao car setup in F1 2021. As I’ve mentioned above, this was an extremely fun setup to create but proved extremely challenging. Once you get your head around the ups and downs of this track, quite literally. It is extremely fun to drive and race on.
When the other DLC tracks drop, I’ll be releasing setup videos for those as well. Let me know how you get on with this setup in the comments below.
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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