F1 24 How To Turn A Dry Car Setup Into A Wet Setup

Having the right car setup for your upcoming F1 24 race can make a huge difference. A good setup can help you put in faster lap times, manage your tyre wear better, and help you feel more confident behind the wheel.

But what happens when the rain starts to fall? You can’t really use the same car setup that you would if the track was dry. You won’t have enough grip, making the corners incredibly tricky to manage in wet conditions.

Thankfully, there are some key changes that you can make to any car setup to turn it into a very competent wet setup. In this guide, I’m going to show you what I would change to any of our recommended F1 24 car setups if the race is going to be wet.

How is a wet car setup different?

First of all, we need to understand what changes when you are racing on a wet track compared to a dry one. The biggest thing is that grip levels reduce significantly. This means you will have less mechanical grip, and less overall downforce.

The results of this will be felt immediately as you start to slide across the track. You will find it harder to apply the throttle without spinning your rear wheels and it will be much easier to lock a brake.

You’ll need to start braking earlier into a corner, and not applying as much brake pressure. Then on the corner exit, you’ll need to be much more gentle while accelerating, applying much less throttle pressure.

How does racing on a wet track affect our car setup

When creating any car setup in F1 24, you’re main focus will be on performance, with tyre wear and driveability being close behind. To maximise your performance, you will want to adjust the aerodynamics so that they are as low as you can get away with before losing too much time through the corners.

This approach is ideal for racing the AI through a career mode, as the AI normally always has superior straight-line speed in F1 24. Other car setup changes that contribute to performance are running higher on-throttle differential setups, stiff suspension and anti-roll bar setups and a low ride height.

All of these things are crucial to achieving fast lap times in the dry, but each should be changed when creating a wet car setup.

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What makes a good wet car setup?

Compared to a dry car setup, a good wet setup will have much higher aerodynamics to provide more downforce. You’ll also likely soften the suspension for greater stability and increase the ride height to allow for the water that sits on the track surface to not touch your car’s floor.

Tyre pressures will also need to be changed to get them into the correct working window, and lower pressures can help to provide slightly more grip.

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The changes to make to convert any dry setup into a good wet car setup

Now I want to look at the specific changes that you’ll need to make to any dry setup to convert it into a wet setup. I recommend using our dry F1 24 car setup for the track you’re racing at as a starting point.

Depending on how heavy the rain is forecast to be, you will need to adjust the recommendations I’m about to make. Light to medium rain won’t require changes that are as drastic compared to racing in heavy rain.

Aerodynamic changes

When creating a specific wet car setup, you should focus much less on top speed. Adding more downforce will almost always improve your lap time more than better top speed in the rain.

The best way to combat the reduced grip that a wet track offers, is to increase your downforce levels. I would recommend increasing both front and rear downforce.

Extra front downforce will reduce understeer and help you rotate your car into the corner better. The added rear downforce will help a lot with rear stability and traction. This is often the trickiest part of racing in the rain, so you may want to increase the rear wing more than the front.

• Aero changes for intermediate conditions:
  • Increase front and rear wing by 2-4
• Aero changes for full wet conditions:
  • Increase front and rear wing by 4-6

For intermediate conditions, you won’t want as much extra wing as you would in extremely wet conditions. Increase the front and rear wings by 2 to 4 points for light to medium rain and by 4 to 6 points for wet conditions.

Remember, adding one or two more clicks of rear wing will help with better traction and less oversteer.

Differential changes

The main item to change with the differential in wet races is the on-throttle differential. The off throttle and engine braking can be left pretty much the same as they predominantly affect the stability under braking which should be unchanged in the rain.

If anything, you could lower the off-throttle diff or increase engine braking ever so slightly, but these are changes that I wouldn’t actually recommend unless you feel really comfortable with your car.

Back to the on-throttle differential. This really affects your traction. Higher values result in a more locked diff which will give better drive out of faster corners. However, at slower speeds, a more locked differential can cause more snap oversteer and sudden traction loss.

• Differential changes for intermediate conditions:
  • Lower on-throttle differential by 20%
• Differential changes for full wet conditions:
  • Lower on-throttle differential by 40-50%

It’s safe to say we don’t want that during a wet race, as stability is crucial. So, I’d recommend lowering the on-throttle differential a fair bit. In light to medium rain, lower it by around 20%. In heavier rain, you can lower it right down by 40 or even 50%.

Try this setting out on track and see if you struggle with wheelspin or you feel confident. If you keep lighting up the rear tyres, drop the on-throttle differential a bit more.

Suspension geometry changes

The suspension geometry is a setting that isn’t overly useful in F1 24. The fastest car setups, including our recommended setups, normally have camber set all the way to the left and toe almost always to the left with just a bit of rear toe for stability.

This preference remains unchanged in the rain. Always keep the camber set far left to ensure the largest lean angle possible, and always set the front toe-out to its minimum value.

The toe-in at the rear is one area that you may want to play with. At some circuits where rear stability is crucial, I do recommend setting some rear toe even in our dry setups. I would recommend adding some rear toe at almost every circuit.

This will help with rear stability, especially through faster corner sequences such as the Esses at Suzuka or the fast sequences as Silverstone, Mexico and COTA.

• Geometry changes for intermediate and full wet conditions:
  • Add small amount of rear toe-out if needed

Suspension changes

Much like the aerodynamics and on-throttle differential, you will want to change your suspension setup when heading into a wet race, qualifying or practice session.

Working on the same principle as before, we are trying to create a car that is easier to drive. The best way to do that with our suspension is to soften it down. Stiffer suspension setups can help with faster direction changes but can also cause some instability if pushed to their limits.

I would recommend softening the front suspension by 1 or 2 points. You don’t need much adjustment here. The bigger adjustments are for the anti-roll bars as these affect stability to a much greater degree.

You can lower both front and rear anti-roll bars by around 2, 3 or 4 points depending on the severity of the rain. If you are using a dry setup that has the anti-roll bars set to 21-21 which is a common time trial approach. I would recommend lowering the rear ARB more than the front. Try to create a gap between front and rear ARBs of around 4 points.

You will also need to increase the ride height to account for the water on the track surface. Running a ride height that is setup for dry conditions can result in the car’s floor touching the surface water, and in extreme scenarios this can cause you to bottom out.

For light rain, increase front and rear ride height by 2 or 3 points and in extremely heavy rain, increase it by 4 or 5 points. You can increase the rear more than the front if you need to get a bit more rotation into corners.

• Suspension changes for intermediate conditions:
  • Lower front suspension stiffness by 1 or 2 points
  • Lower front and rear ARBs by 2 or 3 points, ensuring the rear is softer than the front
  • Increase ride height by 2 or 3 points
• Suspension changes for full wet conditions:
  • Lower front suspension stiffness by 2 points
  • Lower front and rear ARBs by 3 or 4 points, ensuring the rear is softer than the front
  • Increase ride height by 4 or 5 points

Brake setup changes

While you will notice a distinct lack of grip when turning into a corner and accelerating out of it, possibly the biggest change comes to your braking. In the rain, it is so much easier to lock a brake, and you will always need to brake much earlier into a corner.

When it comes to changes to our brake setup for wet conditions, I tend to leave things the same. But if you do find yourself struggling, there are some good changes that can dramatically improve your braking.

You will normally find yourself locking your front wheels in wet conditions, and two changes can help ease this issue. You can decrease your brake pressure a few points. This will result in less pressure being applied making it slightly easier to brake at full without locking a wheel.

You can also move the brake bias 1 point to the rear. This will put more pressure through the rear brakes, easing the pressure on the fronts. You can still lock your rear brakes in the rain, so I’d advise against moving the brake bias, but it’s there if you really need it.

• Brake changes for intermediate and wet conditions:
  • Nothing, unless really needed

Tyre pressure changes

The tyres are one area that will need adjusting when heading into a wet race. You will almost certainly need to adjust the pressures to get the tyres into the correct temperature window. This will be incredibly dependant on just how heavy it is raining.

A wetter track will cool your tyres more, while a dryer track surface can overheat wet or intermediate tyres.

Always keep an eye on your temperatures via the MFD during a wet session, and adjust the pressures as needed. Increase the pressures to cool your tyres, or reduce them to help them heat up faster.

You can refer to our recommended tyre temperatures for F1 24 to see the ideal temperature range for each tyre. With the intermediate tyre, you should aim for around 65°C, and with the full wet tyre, the optimal temperature is 55°C.

Compound	Min temp	Optimal temp	Max temp
Inter	55°C	65°C	75°C
Wet	45°C	55°C	65°C

As well as the tyre temperatures, you may want to consider lowering pressures anyway. Lower pressures results in more of the tyre surface being in contact with the track surface which can lead to better traction.

If you are struggling to apply the power out of corners and you don’t want to add more rear downforce or lower your on-throttle differential further, slightly lower rear pressures can be your answer.

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Conclusion

The changes that I’ve laid out in this guide will result in a near optimal wet car setup when using our dry setups as a baseline. Of course, there is so much variability depending on just how heavy it is raining, which can lead to you having to adjust your setup to different degrees.

If its only lightly raining, use our recommended minimum changes and start to increase the changes the more it rains.

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