Race Faster in Wet Weather in F1 22

Driving in wet weather in F1 22 is extremely tricky. You’ll find it much harder to slow the car down and trickier to manage your throttle under acceleration. You’ll have to apply a new set of skills to truly master the wet in F1 22.

In this guide, I’m going to run through 7 top tips for driving in the wet in F1 22.

1 – Adapt your braking

If you’re mid-race and the sky opens up and starts to rain, the very first thing you’ll notice is that you need to start braking earlier in to corners. In wet conditions in F1 22, you simply don’t have the same levels of grip in the rain as you do in dry conditions.

This is immediately apparent in the braking zones. If you try to brake at the same point as you would in the dry, chances are you’ll miss the corner’s apex completely, even if you’re on wet tyres.

Wet weather elongates the braking zone due to the reduced grip, and it will also make your car understeer more as you start to turn into a corner. Again, this understeer is caused by the lack of grip compared to grip levels on a dry track.

The best way to adapt your braking to wet weather in F1 22, is to start braking slightly earlier than you would normally in the dry. Braking earlier gives you longer to slow your car down. This distance will change the wetter the conditions get.

When it starts to rain lightly and you’re on intermediate tyres, your stopping distance will be longer than in dry conditions, but not as long as in heavy wet conditions. You will need to judge the conditions as they change, especially if the rain is getting heavier throughout a race or a session.

Brake bias

The second thing you can adjust to adapt your braking for wet conditions is to adjust your brake bias. Your brake bias changes how much of the overall braking force gets sent to the front brakes, and how much gets sent to the rear brakes.

Typically in dry conditions, you will have a brake bias setup of between 52-58%. The further forward your brake bias (indicated by how high the percentage is), the more of the braking force is sent to your front brakes. This can result in shorter stopping distances in a straight line but also increases the chance of locking a wheel.

In wet conditions, the chance of locking a wheel increases as the grip is reduced. If you move your brake bias slightly rearward (closer to 50%) you will decrease your chance of locking a front wheel. Be careful not to move your brake bias too far rearward, as you can inadvertently start to lock the rear brakes. This is much more dangerous than locking the front brakes as you can risk spinning your car under braking.

Brake pressure

If you are heading into a wet session, you can always adjust your brake setup before you go out on track. Reducing your brake pressure can only be done before you start to qualify. After you have gone out on track during qualifying you can no longer change most of your car setup.

One area to change if you get the chance before a session is your brake pressure. This setup option changes how much pressure is applied to each brake during braking. The higher this is, the more stopping power you’ll have, but again you’ll have higher chances of locking a wheel the higher you set this.

During wet conditions, to reduce the risk of locking a wheel you can lower your brake pressure. Lower brake pressures will put less strain on your brakes under braking. This will lead to longer braking zones, but the benefits will be more consistent braking without lockups.

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2 – Gentle acceleration

A similar approach to braking also applies to your acceleration in F1 22. Due to the lack of grip in wet weather, you’re much more likely to spin your rear tyres under acceleration. You simply won’t be able to apply the same amount of throttle power and maintain traction in the rain.

During dry conditions, you will get used to applying the throttle gradually out of corners to avoid wheelspin. In wet conditions, your acceleration will need to be even more gradual still. You are much more likely to spin your rear wheels when accelerating, so limiting your throttle application will help mitigate the risk of wheel spinning.

Short shifting

To help you accelerate in wet conditions, you can also utilise short shifting. Short shifting is the technique of changing up through the gears earlier than you normally would. Instead of revving your engine to its fullest before shifting, you shift earlier in the rev range.

The lack of grip in wet conditions can make it possible to spin your wheels when accelerating, even through 3rd, 4th and 5th gear. In normal dry conditions, you wouldn’t experience wheel spin past 2nd or 3rd gear normally.

What short shifting does is help limit the amount of revs when accelerating. Higher revs increase the risk of spinning your rear wheels, so reducing the point at which you shift can help limit potential wheel spin.

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3 – Using Your Differential Settings

Your on-throttle differential is one of your best friends when racing in the wet in F1 22. You can change your on-throttle diff setup at any point, during any session, even mid-race. This is done using your MFD.

As I’ve mentioned in our definitive guide to being faster in F1 22, your on-throttle diff setup can help limit wheelspin under acceleration.

Essentially, your on-throttle diff controls the rate at which your rear wheels spin in relation to each other. The closer you set your on-throttle diff to 100%, the closer your rear wheels spin to eachother. At 100% both rear wheels will spin at the same speed at all times.

Setting a high value here can help your maximum traction potential as well as keeping your mid-corner speed high during fast turns. It will help drive your car through a corner at greater speed.

However, the higher you go with your on-throttle diff, the easier it will be to spin up your rear wheels under acceleration from low speed. Instead, a lower value (closer to 50%) will allow each rear wheel to spin independently at different speeds. This approach is good for reducing wheel spin at slower speeds.

And it will also help reduce the chance of wheel spin during wet conditions in F1 22.

During a race, if it starts to rain, you can start to lower your on-throttle diff setting to help limit wheelspin as grip levels reduce. You can go as low as 50% which I’d recommend doing for heavier rain.

Read our guide on how F1 22 car setups differ from F1 2021.

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4 – Avoid Kerbs

Kerbs can be your best friend during dry conditions. You will use them to shorten the route through a corner by driving over them often. However, when the weather starts to turn and it becomes wet in F1 22, the kerbs become something you’ll want to avoid.

Kerbs at most circuits are constructed using different materials than the same asphalt that is used for the track surface. And the ridges within kerbs can collect water as it rains.

All of this means that kerbs can be extremely slippery when the weather is wet in F1 22. This also applies to painted lines around a circuit. The paint that is used for the white lines at the edge of every circuit doesn’t have the same levels of grip as the asphalt itself.

Positioning your car on the white lines and kerbs in the rain can result in a sudden loss of grip. Ideally, you should try to not drive over kerbs in wet weather to avoid the risk of spinning.

Instead, try to drive as close as you can to the kerbs without actually touching them with any of your wheels. This will allow you to maximise the width of the circuit without risking a spin.

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5 – Tyre Choice

Your choice of tyre during wet conditions is one of the most important decisions you can make. Both intermediate and full wet tyres have grooves to help disperse water, whereas dry tyres are completely slick. This means, that dry tyres can’t disperse any water and instead will drive on top of the water. This can result in aquaplaning and the loss of grip.

Intermediate tyres have a few grooves. These are designed to disperse small quantities of water. This makes them the perfect tyre for conditions where the rain is light.

Wet tyres have more grooves that are deeper compared to intermediates. These are designed to disperse a lot more water and are used for conditions where the rain is heavy and there’s a lot of water on the track.

Here is a quick breakdown of the two tyres and the conditions that each one is ideal for;

Intermediate Tyres – Lightly grooved tyres suitable for drizzle and light rain.
Full Wet Tyres – Heavily grooved tyres suitable for heavy rain.

It can be tricky to decide when to use intermediate tyres and when to use full wets. If the session starts with heavy rain conditions, you should look to opt for full wet tyres straight away.

However, when the weather changes and the rain either slows or starts to rain heavier if it started in dry conditions, you’ll have to decide when to change tyres.

You can use the intermediate tyre in the following circumstances;

• Light rain.
• After the rain has ended and the track has dried slightly, but not enough for dry tyres.
• The track is slippery due to rain but not soaked.

You should look to use full wet tyres in the following circumstances;

• Heavy rain.
• Consistent long periods of medium to heavy rain.
• You are on intermediates and can feel you are losing grip.

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6 – Knowing When To Change Tyres

As I mentioned above, knowing when to change tyres during a session where the weather is changing is an extremely important decision. If you stay on dry or intermediate tyres in conditions where it is raining too heavily for them, you will lose a lot of lap time from having to drive slower to avoid losing control or aquaplaning.

The same is also true if you are on wet weather tyres and the rain starts to slow or stop. Wet weather tyres are fantastic for heavy rain conditions, but during light rain or dry conditions, they don’t offer as much grip as dry or intermediate tyres and can overheat.

If you can’t cool your full wet tyres with enough on-track water they will overheat and wear at a fast rate.

A lot of knowing when to change tyres in F1 22 is confidence in your car and your ability to keep your car on the road during tricky conditions.

There can be a lot of time to gain during a race from being on the right tyre at the right time. And if you are one of the first drivers to change onto a new compound of tyre, you could gain a lot of time.

However, it has to be a calculated risk, as there is also a larger chance of spinning or losing a lot of time if you switch too early on to a tyre that isn’t right for the track’s current conditions.

Use DRS to know when to change tyres

Top tip – During wet conditions in F1 22, DRS is always disabled for safety purposes. A good way of knowing when the best time to change from intermediate to dry tyres on a drying track is to pay attention to when DRS is re-enabled. You will get a notification when DRS is enabled, and it is almost always enabled before the track is completely dry.

This is also applicable to the reverse. If DRS gets disabled because the track is deemed too wet, it is normally a good time to pit and switch from dry to intermediate tyres.

Tyre temperatures

Another great way of knowing when the right time to change tyres is to pay attention to your tyre temperatures. You can see your tyre temps in F1 22 in the MFD while driving. If you are on dryer tyres than is required, you will notice they will start to cool down beyond the ideal operating window.

If you are on full wet tyres and the track is drying, you will notice your tyres are overheating. This is generally a good indicator that there isn’t enough water on track for full wets to be the most optimal tyre.

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7 – Use ERS Overtake

In F1 22 you can choose to manually manage your ERS deployment mode. This can be set in the settings menu.

If you do have manual control over your ERS management during a race, you can adjust its setting to give you an advantage in wet weather in F1 22.

Running with overtake ERS mode off will send less battery power to your rear wheels. While this will reduce your overall BHP (Brake horsepower) making you slightly slower along the straights. It will also reduce the power that is sent through your rear wheels under acceleration.

Not using overtake ERS mode works in a similar way to lowering your on-throttle diff setting that I mentioned above. By sending less power to your rear wheels, you will find it easier to manage your acceleration out of slower corners.

As the weather starts to dry up, and the track becomes easier to drive, you can start to increase both your on-throttle diff and start to use overtake ERS mode.

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So there are our 7 top tips for becoming faster in the rain in F1 22. These should help you focus on improving your consistency in the wet, and gradually improving your speed and lap times.

We do have one more tip just below, and that is to consider buying a racing wheel for F1 22. This will give you much more input control and make racing in F1 22 much more immersive!

Consider a racing wheel

Racing with a controller in F1 22 can be fun, but you don’t have the same levels of immersion or control as you can have with a racing wheel. A racing wheel allows for much more precise steering inputs compared to a controller’s small joystick.

This is especially useful in the rain where you’ll need the most gentle of touches on the steering wheel and throttle. While a racing wheel does a great job of offering more precision while driving, it also offers much more immersion.

There is no better feeling in F1 22 than sitting behind a physical racing wheel, in cockpit cam and jumping into a race. It is simply one of the best ways to play the game!

View our recommendations for the best racing wheels for F1 22 and our best racing wheels for PS5

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