How to Find the Perfect AI Difficulty in F1 24

When racing in any offline game mode, such as My Team or Career, the speed of the other cars on the track is set by the AI difficulty. This setting is responsible for setting just how hard races in F1 24 can be.

Choosing the correct AI difficulty for your skill level is important to ensure the on-track gameplay is enjoyable. Setting this too high or too low can make the game incredibly hard or easy to the point where it isn’t enjoyable or offering a challenge.

In this guide, I will show you how to find the perfect AI difficulty in F1 24 in just a few minutes. Following this guide will ensure the on-track action is challenging yet enjoyable.

We have built an F1 24 AI difficulty calculator where you can find the perfect AI difficulty each track. Simply choose your track, input your fastest dry time trial lap time, and our calculator will recommend an AI difficulty level for that race in F1 24. You can then tweak the difficulty from there, but our calculator is a great way of quickly finding your rough skill level comapred to the AI.

Why should you change the AI difficulty in F1 24?

The AI difficulty in F1 24 determines how fast the other drivers are on track. The default setting will not be perfect for everyone’s skill level. Faster, more skilled sim racers will almost certainly want to increase the AI difficulty, while newcomers to the series may want to lower it.

Most players will want a good challenge from the AI in F1 24, having the chance to race wheel-to-wheel and compete for podiums and wins. This style of racing requires the perfect AI difficulty where the other drivers are challenging yet beatable.

You can always manipulate the AI difficulty to be harder or easier. Setting them slightly easier can result in you winning more races which many will find enjoyable.

Choosing a slightly harder AI difficulty can mean you’ll be competing at the back of the grid. However, this approach can result in you becoming faster over time as you compete to keep up with and challenge the tougher AI opponents.

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How to adjust the difficulty in F1 24

Changing the AI difficulty in F1 24 is very quick, although it must be done from the main menu. You cannot change the AI difficulty mid-race, so it is worth choosing the correct difficulty before starting a career or race.

To change the AI difficulty;

• Head into a quick race from the main menu
• Select any car, track and driver
• Before heading into the race, you can change the settings, including the difficulty
• Select your preferred AI difficulty, then continue to start the race

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How to find the right AI difficulty

We have built our own F1 24 AI difficulty calculator which lets you find the perfect AI difficulty for your skill level for each track. Simply choose your track, input your fastest time trial lap time, and our difficulty calculator will recommend a skill level to choose in F1 24.

For returning players who have played previous F1 games, you may have a good idea of the AI difficulty as you can base it on the old game. However, choosing the right AI difficulty may be trickier for those who are new to F1 24 or haven’t played a Formula 1 game in a long time.

Of course, you can select any AI difficulty, head into a quick race, and see how you compare. Then quit, adjust the difficulty setting, and repeat the process. However, this can be time-consuming and result in a lot of wasted time back and forth.

My top tip on selecting the right AI difficulty for you requires just a single qualifying session.

Using the one-shot qualifying mode to find AI difficulty.

The one-shot qualifying mode is an option you can select when setting up a Grand Prix in the race menu. This will allow all drivers to drive a single hot lap to define their qualifying position. When racing in career modes, this can be helpful to save time compared to the traditional three-part qualifying that Formula 1 uses.

However, you can quickly gauge your maximum pace against the AI’s by competing in a single one-shot qualifying. If you do not know which AI difficulty you should use, I’d recommend setting it to 75%. Alternatively, you can take your best guess at how fast you think you’ll be.

With your AI difficulty set, head into a one-shot qualifying session around a track you know. Complete the qualifying session and note down your lap time compared to other drivers.

This information will help you determine how much slower or faster you are than the AI. You can decrease the difficulty if you finish at the back or towards the back of the grid. If you qualify on pole or towards the front, you may want to increase the difficulty.

Using the 10 points of difficulty to 1 second calculation, you can quickly decide how to adjust the AI difficulty.

For example, if I were racing in a Red Bull, but my qualifying time was around 2 seconds slower than the other Red Bull, I could confidently decrease the AI difficulty by around 20 points. This would bring the AI in line with my speed.

You can repeat this process a few times to confirm that your new difficulty is much more accurate, or you can head straight into a race to see how you fare against the competition.

View which racing wheels we recommend for F1 24 in our buyer’s guide.

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Testing your AI difficulty in a race

After using the one-shot qualifying mode to find an AI difficulty you believe is similar to your speed, it is time to head into a race. A wheel-to-wheel race will quickly indicate whether you are faster or slower than the AI.

While the one-shot qualifying mode gives a good indication of overall lap time, it doesn’t show where the AI is faster or slower than you. In a race, you can pay attention to the AI and see how they drive through each corner.

On lower difficulties, the AI may take some corners too slowly, but they may be faster on the straights, which is where they make up lap time. In this scenario, you could increase the difficulty to speed the AI up through corners, and look to adjust your car setup to improve your top speed.

If you can easily keep up with the AI throughout a race, it may be time to increase the difficulty. On the other hand, if you consistently fall back from the AI or are being overtaken often, decreasing the difficulty may be the best route.

If you are struggling to keep up with the AI, but don’t want to lower the difficulty, you can try using one of our optimised F1 24 car setups. These setups are designed to make the car easier to control and faster as well, leading to you becoming more competitive against tougher AI difficulties.

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Using the AI to help you become faster

While spending time in F1 24, one of your goals may be to improve your overall speed and become a better driver. Using the AI difficulty options to do this is an incredibly effective method.

When racing on track, you can observe the AI cars around you and use them as guides through corners. Seeing where the other cars brake and how fast they drive through corners can teach you when and how to attack a specific turn. This can help you build confidence to brake later or show you a different racing line that could be faster.

A great way to improve using the AI is to set the AI difficulty higher than your current skill level. This can result in some pretty challenging races, but due to the other cars being faster than you, you can learn how they are finding lap time. Following a car that is faster than you can teach you where and how to improve your own pace.

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Is that AI speed different at every track?

One important aspect when changing your AI difficulty is that the speed of the AI does change at each track. Setting a single difficulty setting for a whole season can be tough as you may be able to easily beat the AI at one track, just to find them incredibly fast at a different track.

For example, at a track like Jeddah, the AI is actually a bit slower, meaning you can increase your difficulty setting before that race. But the AI are much faster at a track such as Monza or Brazil. This could require you to lower your difficulty setting to be able to compete with the same cars that you were racing with in Jeddah.

This has been echoed throughout the Formula 1 community, with comments on this Reddit post agreeing that the difficulty does differ at each track.

While testing how fast the AI is at each track, we tracked our changes to the difficulty for each race. We’ve created a graph below to show how we changed the difficulty of the AI between races. You can see that we had to increase or decrease the AI difficulty by up to 5 points to be competitive at some tracks.

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Does the AI difficulty change with game updates?

Various patches and updates are released throughout a game’s life cycle. These can add new features, such as new car liveries, but they are also designed to balance the game and adjust various elements.

New game updates in F1 24 could change either your car or the AI cars around you. This can result in you needing to adjust the AI difficulty after a patch. Typically, any adjustments will be minor, but if you load F1 24 one day and suddenly find yourself faster or slower than normal, a game update may be the reason.

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Conclusion

Choosing the correct AI difficulty to match your own skill level in F1 24 can result in races that are much more challenging and enjoyable. Hopefully, the tips in this guide have helped you find the best AI difficulty without too much back and forth and multiple test races.

As you grow as a driver and improve your pace in F1 24, you may need to adjust the AI difficulty to reflect this. Increasing the AI difficulty throughout a career mode is normal as you start to challenge closer to the front of the grid.

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Frequently asked questions