Austrian Setups F1 2020

F1 2020 Austria setup guide overview

You’ll spend most of the lap around the Red Bull Ring, Austria at high speed, and full acceleration. It is an extremely short and very quick track to drive, meaning you will want a low downforce setup which is setup to allow for consistent laps.

This is one of the funnest circuits to drive on the whole calendar and the primary reason for that are the super high speed corners. Once you have your Austrian car setup dialed in you can attack almost every corner around the track, leading to an extremely fun race.

As mentioned you will want to opt for a reasonably low downforce setup to account for the high speed nature. If you apply too much front or rear wing you will be hindering your top speed, and losing lap time.

Opt for slightly lower front wing downforce, with an emphasis on rear downforce stability. You will want to ensure the rear of your car has enough downforce to allow you to apply the power early through each turn.

Due to most corners being taken at high speed you can run an aggressive differential setup, as you wont need to worry too much about losing rear traction. This will give you the highest amount of power out of these mid to high speed corners, leading to the best corner exit.

There are however, a couple of exceptions. Turns 3, 4, and to some extent turn 1 all involve heavy braking and slow speed exits. For these corners, especially turn 3 you will struggle for traction when applying the throttle. If you feel confident enough to make setup changes throughout the lap, you should look to lower the differential when approaching these corners.

The lower you change it to, the easier your acceleration out of these corners will be. To make it easier, you can adjust the differential right down when crossing the start finish straight. Leave it set to a low setting through the first sector, and then once you have exited turn 4 and have full traction, crank it right back up. Rinse and repeat this process every lap if possible to maximise lap time.

You can run your camber and toe quite aggressive for your Austria setup. There isn’t too much tyre wear, with the majority of it coming at the front end as you lean on the front tyres a lot through the high speed corners. You can compensate for tyre wear when you get to the suspension setup so don’t be scared to run aggressive suspension geometry.

When it comes to your suspension setup, you can compensate for the aggressive geometry by running the suspension soft. This will help tyre wear as well as allowing you to ride over kerbs throughout the lap without losing much stability. You will want to be attacking every kerb around Austria so the softer the better here.

Despite the soft suspension, you will require some rigidity for the quick direction changes in the last sector, so ensure you don’t soften your anti-roll bars too much. Keep these set to soft to medium.

You can adjust your brake pressure to be higher than average to slow your car down quicker in the heavy braking zones. But keep your brake bias fairly rearward, around 52-53. If you have time whilst driving, once again you can adjust your brake bias to be more forward biased into turns 1, 3 and 4.

This will slow the car down in a shorter distance, but you will want to change it back for the middle and last sector. These two sectors require short, sharp braking inputs whilst the car is under load either left or right. The rearward braking bias will help keep the car stable through this part of the track.

How To Best Drive The Austrian Grand Prix Circuit in F1 2020

Once you have nailed your perfect Austrian setup for F1 2020, you will be able to attack this track with purpose. Austria is a circuit which rewards drivers for being brave and attacking every kerb. You will find yourself riding the kerbs throughout the lap, especially in the last sector. Throughout this sector you will want to shorten the track to allow you to be on the throttle as much as possible.

There are a few good overtaking opportunities around Austria, with the main ones being in to turn 3 and 4. These are heavy braking zones at the end of DRS assisted straights. Famously, turn 3 is where Max Verstappen and Charles Leclerc came together in their battle in the 2019 race.

Turn 1 can be an overtaking spot, although we wouldn’t recommend it unless you have a mega exit out of the last corner. The first corner is taken at mid speed and is very narrow on its exit. If you go side by side around here, more often than not, the driver on the outside will be forced to run off track. You will also heavily compromise your speed down the long straight that follows.

Instead, if you are close to the driver in front along the pit straight, focus on making turn 1 perfectly and getting a good exit. You should easily be able to pull along side the drive in front down the next straight and attack in to turn 3. This is the best spot to overtake. Just try to ensure you don’t compromise your exit from turn 3, as you could be vulnerable down the next long straight.

If it does look like a driver is going to attack you down to turn 4, try your best to get the inside line. Turn 4 is taken at a decent speed so it can be tricky to overtake around the outside of this corner. Defend the inside line and as long as you are neck and neck in to turn 4, you should come out ahead.