F1 22 Car Setup Changes For Patch 1.06

Hey guys, just as I thought we had done a fantastic job creating the most optimised car setups for every track, Codemasters decided to drop the 1.06 patch, which kinda affected the entire handling model!

This means that car setups also need to be adjusted. In this guide, I’m going to run through how the handling has been changed in patch 1.06, and how these changes affect our car setups. And finally, I’ll look at what changes we need to implement to update our car setups for every track.

F1 22 Patch 1.06 Setup Changes Video

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How is the handling different after patch 1.06?

The recent patch 1.06 for F1 22 has changed a fair few things with the handling model that was present when the game launched.

Many players were previously saying that the handling model wasn’t very good due to the difficulty finding traction at low speeds and the incredible straight-line speed of the AI. Thankfully, both of those issues have been adjusted.

There are three big areas that have been changed with this latest patch.

Traction

Thankfully, traction is now much easier to find at lower speeds. This has been fixed with an adjustment to the gear ratios to make them longer in lower gears. And by adjusting the torque curve. Both of these changes make it much easier to apply more throttle at lower speeds before you spin your rear wheels.

Handling Group Lead, David Greco stated in a deep dive that;

“Engine Torque

The engine torque curve has been tweaked slightly, from an almost flat torque of 6,000 – 10,000 rpm to a curve, with a lower Max nm and a progressively increasing torque. This means that the engine has less torque at lower rpm and that power will increase gradually.

Gear ratios

Gear ratios have been tweaked slightly, especially the lower gears, making them longer to help with traction.”

You can find a link to the deep dive here.

Aerodynamics

Next up, the cars have been made to feel a little more weighty with some adjustments to how the suspension works. This has made the cars in F1 22 more prone to understeer.

This can be fixed by looking at the aerodynamics or the suspension and suspension geometry, or a combination of all three.

Tyre Temperatures

Possibly the biggest change comes to the way tyre temperatures work and how they affect your car’s handling. Before patch 1.06, you could run incredibly high tyre temperatures at most tracks without really affecting tyre wear.

Now after the patch, higher tyre pressures negatively affect your tyre temperature much more. If you run excessively high pressures, your tyres will overheat after just a lap or two. And this will cause vastly increased tyre wear, and loss of grip.

The working range of the tyres has dropped from around 90-110°C, down to 90-100°C. As soon as your tyres get hotter than 100°C, you’ll start to feel loss of grip.

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What changes need to be made to existing car setups?

There are a wide range of other changes that have been introduced with patch 1.06, from bug fixes to force feedback updates. But we’re going to focus on the three issues that I just mentioned. As these are the issues that will make us need to change our car setups.

So let’s look at what changes you need to make to any of our existing car setups. You wont need a completely new car setup, as the handling updates aren’t that dramatic. Simply applying these few adjustments to any of our previous car setups will be enough to keep you competitive.

Tyre Pressure Setup

The first change you make has to be to the tyre pressures. This is the part of the handling and setups that have been affected the most dramatically. If you use any of our original F1 22 setups, (which can be found here) your tyres will almost certainly overheat.

However, this is an incredibly easy fix to implement. Simply lowering your tyre pressures at the front and rear of the car will do the job.

I found that lowering both front and rear pressures by 2 or 3 clicks brings the tyre temperatures back into their working window.

You may need to lower the front a little more than the rear, as you won’t be spinning your rear wheels as much. Therefore you’ll be generating less heat from wheelspin.

Differential Setup

The next change I have looked to make is a minor one and only applies to some tracks.

If you were racing at a track which had incredibly low on-throttle differential, such as Hungary for example, (where my original setup had an on-throttle diff of 66). You can raise this up a little bit, say by around 5 points or so.

This is because traction is easier to find, meaning you won’t have such a hard time accelerating from slower speeds. The increased on-throttle diff will allow you to carry greater speed through faster corners, so is beneficial through a lot of medium to high-speed turns.

Aerodynamic Setup

The next part of my setups that I’ve been changing is with the aerodynamics. Due to the increased likelihood of understeering since patch 1.06, you can counter some of this with your aero setup.

You can do a couple of things here. Either raise your front aero by 2 or 3 clicks or lower your rear aero by 2 or 3. I wouldn’t do both, as this will probably end up with you having a higher front aero than rear. And that can result in an unstable rear of the car.

Typically, I have been lowering the rear aero by 2 or 3 clicks at most tracks. This will help the car be a little more front-focused, giving better turn-in and eliminating some of the understeer.

Suspension Setup

To further help solve the new problem of understeering, you can make a few tweaks to the suspension setup.

Typically, most race setups in F1 22 utilise a stiffer front end, and a softer rear end. This promotes understeer into a corner, making your car much more stable at medium and higher speeds. The only problem is that this wont help the added understeer that patch 1.06 has brought with it.

You may see many time trial setups opting for the old approach from F1 2021, where it was common to see a soft front suspension and stiffer rear. However, this approach is pretty extreme as it completely flips the handling model on its head. And it is very likely that it will make your car increasingly unstable at the rear.

Instead of going for the extreme approach of inverting our suspension setup. I tend to go for a more subtle approach of softening the front of the car and stiffening the rear, but not to the extreme.

For example, a suspension setup of 9-1 and an anti-roll bar setup of 9-1, would now look something more like 4-2, 5-3.

This will increase rotation into corners, but it won’t make your car so unstable that it’s likely to spin if racing on worn tyres.

View the best racing wheels for F1 22

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Overview

With those changes applied, you can continue to use any of our F1 22 car setups.

The changes to tyre pressures are the most dramatic and will need to be applied to every setup. Then you can apply the adjustments to the aerodynamics and the suspension as required. Only look to apply those updates if you feel the car has become too prone to understeer.

Let me know how you are finding the updated handling model, and what setup changes have been working for you guys. I may look at creating new setup videos for every track to incorporate these changes, however, it will delay the wet setup videos that are planned. Let me know which you’d prefer in the comments below.

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