F1 24: How To Change Any Car Setup After The Handling Patch

Just over a week after launching with some pretty extreme handling characteristics, F1 24 has received its first big patch, which updates the car’s handling. The new update fixes many of the unrealistic levels of grip and responsiveness that were present at launch.

Such a large game update affects handling, which in turn affects car setups. We’ve produced a batch of race-optimised car setups since the launch of F1 24, and a few big changes are required to get the car back up to speed and handling well again.

What has changed with the handling update?

The v1.3 update targeted a few specific areas of the handling model, which received the most criticism. These were;

• The car’s being too responsive, making the steering feel overly twitchy.
• Too much rear grip and unrealistic levels of traction.
• Some parts of car setups not working correctly, such as anti-roll bars.

The creative director for F1 24, Lee Mather, said that the new changes are designed to “calm down the front end of the car, giving a more realistic level of grip and turn-in capabilities.“

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Watch our car setup updates video

Our video below discusses the new handling model in more detail and provides a run through of exactly what can be changed after the v1.3 patch.

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How the new handling affects car setups

One consequence of this new handling model is that the car setups that we and others have created in the past week, do need some adjustments.

Depending on which car setups you’ve been using, you’ll need to change a few things.

• Sim Racing Setups car setups
  The car setups we have been creating are designed for races and career mode. Our goal was to kind of achevie the same thing that Lee Mather said. We wanted to calm down the responsiveness of the car, and make it feel much more stable to drive. That led us to creating car setups with a little bit of inherent understeer baked in.
  
  With the handling patch fixing the turn-in of the cars, using our old car setups will make the car feel way too understeer-happy. We’ll need to essentially liven the car up to bring it back to how it felt before.
• Time trial car setups
  On the other hand, if you were using time trial meta car setups, you will almost certainly need to adjust your car setup to calm the car down. The original batch of esports and time trial setups were designed to use the original handling model to the advantage of faster lap times.
  
  This meant running setups with extremely stiff anti-roll bars and huge gaps between the front and rear aerodynamics. This created a car that could turn in and rotate incredibly well to achieve the fastest lap times.
  
  With the reduction of grip levels, this style of car setup now suffers from the opposite of our car setups. They are too prone to oversteering and the rear of the car will feel incredibly loose. If using a time trial setup, you may need to reduce some of the extreme wing gaps and anti-roll bar setups.

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How to adjust our race-optimised car setups after the v1.3 game update

Going back to our car setups, I now want to talk about what you need to adjust to any of our original car setups to make them feel better after the handling update.

During my testing, I feel there is a big enough change required to some setups to warrant new car setup videos. These will start being released shortly, after I’ve spent some more time with this handling update.

Subscribing to our YouTube channel is the best way of seeing our car setups when they do launch as they always get released on YouTube before anywhere else.

What to change

I’m going to be using my original Bahrain setup as a base for showing what to change.

Aerodynamic changes

Starting with the aerodynamics, our original car setups were often created to reduce the incredibly pointy front-end. This meant small gaps between front and rear wings to keep the car balanced. After the update, the cars feel much more prone to understeer than before, so we need to eliminate this in our setup.

I would recommend creating a bigger offset between the front and rear wings. Say around a gap of 10 points depending on the track. Adjusting this to 36 and 26 will help improve the turn-in capabilities of the car.

Transmission changes

After the patch, traction is harder to find. This means more wheel spin is likely. We can use the transmission to help combat that a little. I have found that reducing the on-throttle differential can help reduce wheel spin.

The other change I would recommend making is increasing the engine braking slightly. If you were using a time trial setup, you won’t need to do this as they used to run high engine braking setups. However, our setups reduced the engine braking to help with stability early to mid-corner.

Suspension geometry changes

The suspension geometry is an important part of the car setup, and can really help us tune in some responsiveness or stability. Moving the camber more to the left increases the angle giving more grip mid corner.

While traction can be harder to find after the handling patch, it is also easier to lose the car mid corner, especially if running high anti-roll bar setups. We can combat this slightly by updating our toe setup. Adding rear toe to our car setup will improve stability, making the rear of the car more compliant overall.

Suspension changes

One of the biggest setup changes needed is with the anti-roll bar setup. Running a stiff front suspension and soft rear suspension still appears to be the best option, but more emphasis is now on using optimised ARBs.

Time trial setups typically use 21-21 anti-roll bars. This used to provide the best grip without the negative consequences. Our race setups did the opposite. We used to lower the ARBs right down to increase overall stability.

After this patch, somewhere in the middle of these two approaches seems to work well. Setting the ARBs too high will now cause instability mid-corner and can result in your car snapping on you. Setting them too low will highlight the new understeer characteristics.

I would recommend moving the ARBs to somewhere in the region of 15-12 to 12-9. This will obviously differ from track to track but is a great starting point for most circuits.

Brake setup changes

One really big area of improvement with the new handling is the reduction in brake loclups. It used to be incredibly easy to lock a wheel resulting in rearward brake bias setups and lower brake pressure.

With this tendency gone, you can set your brake pressure higher and run a slightly more frontward brake bias if you’d like. It is much harder to lock a wheel, and if anything, rear stability under braking is a little worse resulting in the need for a more front-biased setup.

Conclusion

With those changes in place, you should be able to continue using our car setups in F1 24 with more success. Using our old car setups without making changes may result in a car that is prone to understeer. And using an old time trial setup can make your car incredibly hard to drive now.

From my testing of the new F1 24 handling so far, I think new car setups videos will be needed at many tracks. So keep an eye out for them dropping shortly. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to be among the first to see our new car setups as they’re released.

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