F1 24 Controller Settings Guide: Recommended settings for Xbox, PS5 & PC

EA Sports F1 24 is a game that is designed to be widely accessible for a variety of gamers. The number of assists and difficulty settings allow gamers of different ability levels to play F1 24 without the game feeling too daunting.

For many gamers who are trying F1 24 for the first time, a controller will be the go-to input method. While a good racing wheel and pedal set can increase your immersion while playing F1 24, using a controller is perfect for a more relaxed style of racing.

Much like with a racing wheel, there are a range of different settings and options that you can change for your controller. Each setting is designed to help you improve the general performance and comfort you get from using a controller. It is important to have as much control as possible while playing F1 24 due to the incredible speeds that you’ll be racing at.

In this guide, I’m going to run through our recommended controller settings for F1 24. I’ll look at some essential settings to tweak to get better control over your car and help you put in faster lap times.

If you are considering buying a racing wheel for this year’s Formula 1 game, check out our recommendations for the best F1 24 racing wheels.

Watch our controller settings video

Watch our complete F1 24 controller settings video below.

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Is it better to play F1 24 with a controller or racing wheel?

Whether you play F1 24 with a controller or a racing wheel depends on your personal preference and current setup rather than which one is better. Both input methods offer completely different experiences, and both can be enjoyable.

Benefits of a racing wheel

One of the primary benefits of driving F1 24 with a racing wheel is the added immersion. Racing around a track with a controller can be a lot of fun, but nothing beats the immersion of sitting behind the wheel and feeling as though you are in a Formula 1 cockpit.

Of course, using a racing wheel is a far cry from actually sitting in a real Formula 1 car, but many sim racing setups can get close depending on the style of sim rig or cockpit you opt for. Check out our recommendations for the best F1 sim racing cockpits to buy.

I also firmly believe that playing F1 24 with a racing wheel and pedal set can offer a much greater level of control than a controller. You have a much larger input range with a racing wheel and pedal set. You can rotate a steering wheel throughout a 360-degree range compared to steering using a small analogue stick.

This can take some adjusting to get used to. However, it can result in more consistent driving and potentially faster lap times.

Benefits of a controller

Playing F1 24 with a controller also has benefits, and many will choose this option for this year’s games. Racing with a controller allows for a much more flexible approach. It is much easier to pick up a controller and play a few races of F1 24 from your couch or bed. Opting for a racing wheel requires somewhere to mount your hardware and can take up a lot of space.

When browsing the top time trial lap times, you can find some times posted by players using a controller. This shows that you can be just as fast in F1 24 with a controller as those with a racing wheel. The detached nature of a controller can sometimes lead to a more aggressive driving style, resulting in quicker lap times.

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Setting up your controller for F1 24

When you jump into F1 24 with a controller, there are a few things you’ll want to do to improve the feeling of on-track driving.

1. You should look to calibrate your controller to ensure everything is working as it should.
2. Once calibrated, you can change the controller force feedback settings to change how the vibrations and haptics feel.
3. Then, change your button mapping to adjust which buttons control essential features such as DRS and the pit limiter.

In the sections below, I’ll run through each part of how to set up a controller for F1 24 in more detail. I’ll start with the calibration along with our recommended calibration settings, then move on to force feedback settings and button mapping.

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Calibration

Calibration in any game is all about ensuring the controller inputs work how you want them to. Changing the calibration settings in F1 24 will let you adjust how sensitive certain inputs are and give you pretty detailed control over how each input affects your car on track.

Changing the calibration settings is pretty simple to do. Below is a quick overview of how to change the calibration settings in F1 24.

1. Open the controller settings from the menu
2. Perform a button test
3. Adjust your calibration settings

The importance of the button test

The first thing to do when calibrating a controller in F1 24 is to perform the button test. This is accessible directly from the controller settings screen and is started by pressing the select button on your controller.

The button test lets you push each input on your controller and see if it is working and how it is working. You will see on the right-hand side of the screen an icon of the button you’re pushing to confirm that it is registered in the game.

There are also three bars on this screen. These represent your steering, throttle, and brake input. While doing a button test, you’ll want to ensure that you can hit 100% for each of these values. When you aren’t pressing any buttons, all values read zero.

Adjusting your controller deadzone

If you see any values that aren’t zero when no buttons are pressed, it means that the game is registering input. This can happen from a sticky trigger or from stick drift. You will want this to be zero so your car doesn’t drift on the straights or the DRS doesn’t close due to false brake inputs being registered.

If any values aren’t showing zero, adjust your deadzone setting for the relevant input and retry the button test. You will want the deadzone to be set just high enough to stop any unwanted input, but not any higher.

Changing linearity and saturation

Along with the deadzone setting, each input has linearity and saturation settings. These both affect how the inputs that you make are translated to the throttle, brake and steering in-game.

Much like the deadzone adjusts the start of each input, saturation affects the outside deadzone. This can be useful if you cannot hit 100% in-game input when fully pressing the trigger or your analogue stick.

Increasing the saturation will reduce the amount of input you need to physically apply before 100% input is reached in-game. This setting should usually be kept at zero. However, if your controller is old or does not let you reach 100% input, start increasing the saturation for the required input and re-test.

Much like the deadzone, you will only want to add enough saturation to allow you to register 100% input and no more.

The linearity works differently from the deadzone and saturation and changes the input curve for each individual input. This setting will change how sensitive your inputs are at different points.

With the linearity set to default, whatever input you apply should be registered in the game. For example, if you press the brake trigger to 50%, you will register 50% input in the game. This is a neutral or linear setting.

Increasing the linearity will adjust this input ratio and input curve. Adding linearity will slow down the input at the start of the movement. This gives you more control at the start of the input, which lets you apply more subtle inputs to the throttle, brake and steering.

For example, increasing the linearity can result in you pressing the brake pedal to 50% on your controller, which only registers 40% input in-game. The higher you increase the linearity, the higher this offset will become.

Increasing the steering and throttle linearity can be common among some players to give you more control over your initial inputs. This can help with fine steering inputs and help race in F1 24 without traction control enabled.

How does the steering rate affect controller inputs in F1 24?

The final calibration setting to be aware of may be the most important, and that is the steering rate. This works in a similar way to the linearity by adjusting the steering speed and sensitivity.

However, while linearity adjusts the input curve, the steering rate affects the maximum speed at which the in-game steering will react to your controller inputs.

Increasing the steering rate will make your inputs more aggressive, and lowering it will do the opposite. Higher settings will mean the in-game steering can turn faster. Lowering the steering rate will slow the in-game steering speed creating a feeling of friction or damping with your steering.

Lower settings will mean that if you move the analogue stick on your controller to full lock left, the in-game steering will turn to full lock slower. Increasing the setting makes the in-game steering more aggressive and jarring by increasing the speed. This can be seen as a general sensitivity setting.

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Recommended calibration settings

Below are the recommended calibration settings for a controller in F1 24. These were created using the PC version of F1 24 with an Xbox Series X controller, but can work with the game on both Xbox and PS5 consoles as well.

• Steering rate – 130%
• Steering deadzone – 0 (Increase if your steering input test doesn’t stay at 0)
• Steering linearity – 40
• Steering saturation– 0
• Throttle deadzone– 0
• Throttle linearity– 50
• Throttle saturation– 0
• Brake deadzone– 5
• Brake linearity– 35
• Brake saturation– 0

The main things to note with our adjusted controller calibration settings are the adjustments to the deadzone and linearity. Increasing the linearity for the throttle, steering and brake linearity gives much more control when first applying each input. This is especially useful with the throttle and steering.

Increasing the throttle linearity gives more control over small throttle inputs. This helps to race without traction control enabled which is one of the hardest driving assists to turn off in F1 24.

The increased steering linearity results in finer levels of control at higher speeds and when making small steering inputs. This approach can stop the car feeling too twitchy which can really hurt your lap time.

I also raise the steering deadzone to avoid any stick drift when travelling down straights. At zero, you can sometimes notice your car wandering to one side or the other on a straight.

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Recommended controller force feedback settings

With the calibration settings tweaked, your controller should feel much better when on track in F1 24. The cars will be less twitchy and easier to control, especially at higher speeds.

Next up, we should tweak the force feedback settings to help with the vibrations and feel of the car via the controller’s haptics.

Below are our recommended F1 24 force feedback settings for a controller. Again, these were created with an Xbox controller, so they may be slightly different from a PlayStation 5 controller.

• Vibration & force feedback strength – 150
• On track effects – 100
• Rumble strip effects – 90
• Off track effects – 65
• Wheel damper – 50
• Understeer enhance – Off
• Maximum wheel rotation – 345°

Explaining our force feedback setting changes

These settings are pretty different from the default settings and should help you focus on the important sensations rather than the vibrations feeling too muddy.

Increasing the force feedback strength will increase how much feedback you feel while racing. It won’t make the maximum vibrations that you feel stronger, but this setting will help highlight smaller vibrations such as tyre slip and car balance.

Allowing the smaller details to be prominent will enable you to better understand how the car is behaving. This will give you the chance to learn how the car reacts to the track and adjust your inputs.

I have lowered most of the effects, including the rumble strip and off-track effects. This is to stop the controller vibrating as much when you go off track. If you drive over a kerb or onto the grass, you will see that and don’t need the controller to vibrate heavily to tell you.

Lowering these settings lets your controller stay calmer in these settings, giving you a better chance of recovering the car onto the track quickly. Leave the wheel damper setting alone as this doesn’t affect controllers, only racing wheels.

Changing the maximum wheel rotation is an important setting to change. By default, this will be set to 400°, which is the norm for the Formula 1 car with the updated handling model in F1 24. This means you can rotate the steering wheel 200° in either direction to achieve full lock.

In last year’s game, when racing in F1 23 with a controller, the trick was to lower this setting a lot. I do still recommend lowering the setting, but only to around 345° this year.

The cars are much more responsive and twitchy than before, so lowering this as much as I recommended last year, is not the best way to go.

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How to change button mapping in F1 24

The final piece of the puzzle for the perfect F1 24 controller settings is the button mapping. This screen can be found from the controller settings and lets you adjust each and every input on your controller.

If, for example, you want to change the button that activates the DRS, or change the shift up and down buttons, you can from the button mapping menu.

To change any input, simply;

• Scroll down to the input you wish to change.
• You can select it using the “A” button on an Xbox controller or the “X” button on a PlayStation controller.
• Then, press the input you wish to use.

Some common button inputs to change include the shifter buttons. Some players like to set these to the bumpers or the face buttons on the front of the controller. There is no right or wrong; simply do whatever feels comfortable for you. I tend to opt for using the X and A buttons on an Xbox controller. This lets me hover my thumb over these buttons to easily upshift or downshift without moving.

Another input I’d recommend changing is setting the brake bias and differential adjustments to the analogue stick. Adjusting the brake bias forward or backwards by pushing the right analogue stick up or down allows for incredibly fast adjustments throughout a lap.

Real-world Formula 1 driver and sim racers make brake bias adjustments multiple times a lap to really optimise their performance. This can be done with a controller by making this input change.

Read our guide on the best controllers and racing wheels for racing games including F1 24.

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Use optimised F1 24 car setups for additional stability with a controller

Updating your controller settings away from the default settings can make F1 24 easier and more comfortable to drive. So can using an optimised car setup. The default car setups in F1 24 are fine, however, creating or using a custom car setup can increase both your speed and stability. Browse our free F1 24 car setups by track to find the perfect setup and improve your speed.

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Overview

All of the tips in this guide have been designed to help improve the feeling of using a controller in F1 24. You can follow them exactly, copy some of them, or use them as a base to create your own configuration.

Whichever approach works for you is great. The goal is to make yourself feel as comfortable as possible when racing F1 24. Making certain adjustments to your car mid-race without thinking can allow you to concentrate on other areas of driving.

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Frequently Asked Questions