F1 22 features a wide range of assists which allow drivers of all skill sets to be able to enjoy racing Formula 1 cars. In this guide I'll look at each assist, and show you how to race without assists enabled.
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Racing assists in F1 22 are designed to make the game enjoyable no matter your skill level. If you are finding the game too hard with assists turned off, feel free to enable them. They can dramatically improve your experience with F1 22. However, some assists can make you slower so it can be a trade-off between ease of driving vs lap time.
In this guide, I’m going to run through all of the assists in F1 22. I’ll look at what all of the assists do, and which assists you should look to disable in what order. I’ll also bring you my top tips for being able to drive without assists turned on.
Assists in F1 22 are a great way of allowing drivers of all skill levels to race the extremely fast Formula 1 cars. The assists are in place to take away some of the more difficult aspects of driving a Formula 1 car.
Some assists are more convenience-focused, such as pit assist and pit release assist. These allow the computer to take over certain controls at different points during a race so you don’t need to worry about them.
Other assists such as traction control and ABS are designed to improve how easy the Formula 1 cars are to drive in F1 22.
You can enable and disable all of the assists in any way you fancy, allowing you to create your own custom driving profile.
You may like to keep on some of the convenience assists while disabling the assists that alter how the car drives. Or you might like to enable manual gears while still keeping traction control on. The control over assists is completely up to you.
Some assists in F1 22 are designed to slow the car down to make it easier to drive. The braking assist along with ABS can cause you to lap slower than if these assists were disabled.
However, not all assists necessarily make you slower. DRS and ERS assist as well as the pit assists are all more convenience-based assists so you can focus more on driving. These won’t affect your lap time or make you slower in F1 22.
When you start to turn assists off in F1 22, there are a few assists which you can turn off without overly affecting your experience. Turning these assists off will make you feel more involved when racing in F1 22, without making the game too much harder.
The assists you should turn off first are;
Both the steering assist and braking assist should not be enabled unless you really need to in F1 22. Both of them apply some levels of control over the steering and braking, making the cars feel very strange to drive.
You will have some control with these two assists enabled, but the car will prevent you from doing some inputs. Only enable these if you are really struggling to keep the car on the track.
Both the pit assist and pit release assist will make pitting in F1 22 easier. The pit assist will automatically slow your car down as you start to approach the pit lane. This is useful if you don’t know where the pit lane speed limit starts or don’t fancy dealing with it.
The pit release assist will simply handle the whole pit stop for you. You won’t need to worry about your clutch at the end of a pitstop.
Turning both of these settings off don’t impact the game too much. The only additional things you’ll need to pay attention to are slowing your car down manually as you enter the pit lane. You’ll need to apply the pit limiter yourself and you’ll need to accelerate out of your pit box yourself.
F1 22 has introduced new pit stop mechanics such as manually turning into your pit box and stopping in your pit box. Both of these add extra levels of control in the pit lane and immersion to the game.
Both the DRS and ERS assist automatically activate and deactivate both DRS and ERS systems while racing. The DRS in F1 22 normally is manually activated when you enter a DRS zone. The DRS assist will take over this job for you.
With the ERS assist, it will take over control of your Overtake ERS mode. Instead, the game will completely control your ERS deployment so you don’t need to.
Both of these assists are very minor and don’t affect the game very much at all. I would recommend keeping them disabled to give you the choice over when to activate either of them.
One of the next assists you should look to turn off is the automatic gears. The automatic transmission will take away the need to change gears manually. This is actually one of the assists which can slow your car down a little, as it isn’t as optimised as manually shifting.
Automatic gears will be one of the harder assists to turn off, as manually changing gears is a big part of Formula 1 racing. You will have to change gear 40-50 times per lap depending on the track you go to.
Across a long race distance, this could be hundreds if not thousands of shifts per race.
Manual gears is something that you will have to learn in F1 22. You’ll have to learn when the right time to shift up is as well as how to downshift correctly to help slow your car down. Then there are small nuances such as short-shifting to limit wheel spin and holding gears instead of upshifting.
Changing gear up, or shifting up is the easier part of learning to manually change gear. You can learn to listen for when to shift up by listening to the engine sound. However, the easier method is to watch the RPM shift lights.
As you accelerate, the shift lights start to light up. They start on the left side and move to the right. Once the right-most shift light becomes lit, that is the time to change up a gear. You can watch the shift lights on your HUD or on your in-game steering wheel.
If you race with a racing wheel, the shift lights on your steering wheel will also light up. Read our guide on the best racing wheels for F1 22.
Downshifting is a much more tricky process compared to shifting up. It is harder to know when to downshift as you don’t have any real indication other than engine sound. As you approach corners you will also be downshifting multiple times in very quick succession.
As a general rule of thumb, when learning the correct time to downshift, you can keep an eye on your rev lights. As you decelerate or brake, these lights will start to go out. Once all shift lights have gone out, that is the time when you should shift down.
As you slow down further approaching a corner, you will need to downshift multiple times until you reach the ideal gear for the corner.
I would recommend either turning on automatic gears for a lap to see what gear you are in for each corner. Alternatively, you could watch footage of other drivers’ laps on the in-game monitor to see the gears they are in. This will give you a good indication of which gear to be in for each corner.
To ensure you don’t downshift too quickly or too slowly when braking into a corner, I would try to do a few things. Check what gear you are in as you approach the corner. Then remember which gear you need to be in at the apex of the corner.
For example, if I’m in 6th gear just before braking and need to be in 2nd gear for the corner. I know I would need to downshift 4 times as I brake. I would try to space out the time between downshifts evenly to smoothly enter the corner without issue.
If you downshift too fast, you could lock the rear of the car, and cause your car to become unstable. If you downshift too slowly, you won’t get the right amount of deceleration and could miss the apex of the corner.
Once you have a feel for upshifting and downshifting, now you need to try and master the timing of your shifting. This will only come with practice, and potentially watching other hot laps.
For more information about manual gears in F1 22, read our complete guide to learn how to shift with manual gears.
The racing line is an extremely helpful assist in F1 22. It will help those unfamiliar with specific tracks learn the best racing line, including when to brake and accelerate. You will often see even competitive F1 22 racers using the racing line.
This is easily one of the trickiest assists to turn off, as it requires you to learn and feel confident around all tracks in the game. You will be required to learn every corner on every track to feel confident in turning off the racing line. However, this doesn’t need to be as hard as it sounds.
If you are unfamiliar with specific tracks in F1 22, I’d recommend enabling the racing line during your first practice sessions or hot laps. This will allow you to learn the track and become familiar with each corner’s braking zone and ideal line.
Once you start to feel confident that you know which corners are coming at you next, you can look to disable the racing line.
At this point, it’s up to you to remember your braking points, as well as when you can start to accelerate through the corner. You don’t necessarily need to learn every corner on a track to be able to turn off the racing line.
Instead, you can apply a few basic principles to decide where to position your car.
This approach to most corners in F1 22 will serve you well. Even if you don’t remember the exact corner ahead, as long as you know which direction the corner turns in, you can look to implement these tips.
With practice, and after a few laps, you can quickly memorise specific corners. As you complete more and more laps, you’ll remember and learn even more corners. And before you know it you’ll feel extremely confident around the entire lap.
If you are racing in career mode, you get three practice sessions to learn the track and perfect your car setup. Use these practice sessions to try and learn the track.
Top Tips to Removing the Racing Line in F1 22
Both the ABS and traction control assists are possibly the two hardest to turn off. They both help to make your car easier to drive, and without them, you’ll be feeling the full power and might of a raw Formula 1 car.
ABS (Anti-lock braking system) is an assist which makes braking in F1 22 easier to manage. The ABS is possibly easier to disable than the traction control, so I’ll look at this assist first.
What the ABS assist does in F1 22 is it stops your brakes from locking during heavy braking. It will detect when your wheels are about to lock up and the ABS will kick in. It’ll release the brake automatically to avoid locking up, and then it will reapply again once it’s safe to do so.
This avoids you having to manage your brake pressure, and instead, you can simply apply full braking pressure without the risk of a lockup. However, having ABS enabled will mean that it’ll take slightly longer to slow the car down compared to having it disabled.
In real-world Formula 1, cars don’t have ABS. Instead, the braking force and pressure are directly controlled by the driver. The driver has to modulate the amount of brake pressure they apply to avoid the brakes from locking up.
If a driver applies too much brake pressure for too long, the brakes can lock up. This stops the wheel from turning, which results in a loss of grip. This will make your tyre skid across the track causing excess tyre wear. And it will almost always extend your braking zone, meaning you could miss the corner apex.
Learn more about racing without ABS in F1 22 in our detailed guide to braking.
To start to learn how to brake without ABS, you will have to learn to modulate your brake pressure. You’ll also need to learn what increases your chance of locking your brakes.
Your brakes are much more sensitive to lockups at lower speeds. At high speeds, you can apply a lot of braking force to help slow the car down. However, as the speed falls away, you can’t apply as much pressure. If you keep the brake pedal fully pressed at low speeds, you’re likely to lock a wheel.
As you start to slow down, start to decrease the amount of braking input you have applied.
The same applies to braking vs steering. If you start to turn your steering wheel while the brakes are applied, your chances of a lockup increase.
Your steering and braking are heavily linked. As you start to turn the steering wheel, you should look to release the brake pedal.
You can look to trail brake into a lot of corners in F1 22, as this is often the fastest method of entering a corner whilst carrying the most speed. Trail braking is the method of turning whilst still applying brake pressure.
Essentially, as you approach your turn-in point of a corner, you can start to apply steering input. As you do this, start to release the brake pressure. This balance combines both the braking zone and the start of your turn-in point.
Trail braking will allow you to start braking later into the corner, as well as carry more speed into the apex. Both of these advantages help you spend less time through a corner, which can increase your lap time.
The final F1 22 assist I’m going to look at is the traction control. This is possibly the hardest assist to disable and drive without. It does a very good job of controlling the amount of wheelspin that is allowed when you accelerate out of corners.
This assist is especially useful when racing on a track with slower corners, or when racing in the rain. Formula 1 cars are incredibly sensitive when you accelerate. The sheer amount of power these cars have makes it very easy to spin when accelerating out of a corner.
Traction control will kick in if it detects your rear wheels are about to lose grip. Much like ABS, your traction control will lower the amount of power being delivered to your rear wheels to prevent a spin. This makes it much easier to drive in F1 22 without spinning but will make you slower out of corners.
To learn how to drive without traction control, you need to understand why it is so easy to spin your car.
Formula 1 cars send all of their power to the rear wheels under acceleration. When you apply full throttle at slower speeds, all of this power can cause your rear tyres to spin. This will break traction, and cause the rear of the car to oversteer, potentially resulting in a spin.
To stop spinning when exiting corners in F1 22, you need to modulate how much throttle pressure you apply under acceleration. This is a similar approach to managing your brake pressure to avoid locking a wheel.
Just like when braking, you should only apply full throttle when your car is pointing straight. If you have any steering input applied, it will be very easy to spin your rear wheels when accelerating.
Instead, as you exit a corner, apply only a little bit of throttle. As you start to straighten the car, you can gradually increase the amount of throttle applied. When you are completely straight, you can look to apply full throttle.
This gradual application of throttle is the key to driving in F1 22 without traction control.
One top tip for making it easier to drive without traction control is to utilise your on-throttle differential. This is a setting that you can change in the car setup menu, and through your MFD while you are on track.
Lowering your on-throttle differential will decrease the likelihood of your rear wheels spinning under acceleration. The negative side of this is that you won’t have as much outright drive out of faster corners. So it isn’t recommended to lower this all the way to 50 in most cases.
However, if you have disabled traction control and are still struggling, or you’re racing in the wet. Decreasing this setting can help you stop spinning.
Hopefully, these tips will have helped you navigate the F1 22 assists. As you progress and learn the game more, you will feel more comfortable with the car, allowing you to disable assists.
You don’t need to disable all assists straight away. Instead, gradually learn how each assist affects the car, and disable them one at a time. Practice on track with each assist disabled before moving on to disable more.
Over time, with practice you will be able to race with all assists turned off. This will give you the most immersive F1 22 experience and will allow you to unlock the car’s full potential.
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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
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