F1 24 China Setups

China triumphantly returned to the 2024 Formula 1 calendar after a few years away. The Shanghai International Circuit is an incredibly unique and fun circuit to drive, so seeing it return has been great for many fans.

The track is included in F1 24. In past games, China has been included as a bonus track. However, it was not playable during a full season or My Team career in older games. That has changed in F1 24, with the track being playable in all game modes.

Due to the long corners and technical sector 2, China is an incredibly enjoyable circuit to race around in F1 24. However, the mixture of different speed corners and long straights can make it hard to create a car setup.

How to set up a car for China in F1 24?

We recommend creating a car setup with exceptional front downforce and responsiveness. The long corners can really punish a car setup that promotes understeer. If you do understeer through any part of the longer sweeping corners, you can lose a lot of lap time.

For this reason, opting for a car setup with a high front wing aero and a stiffer front suspension will promote responsiveness. This will allow you to attack all corners around the Shanghai International Circuit in F1 24 and extract the fastest lap times possible.

Is a high aerodynamic setup important?

You may think that due to the incredibly long back straight and long start-finish straight, you should run a low-downforce car setup. However, due to the twisty and technical sector between the first corner and turn 12, a higher-downforce car setup is actually a much faster option.

If you want to put in the fastest lap times around China in qualifying or time trial mode, opting for a pretty high front and rear wing aero setup will help.

Making aero changes between qualifying and the race

Lowering the front wing angle during a race can improve straight-line speed. You can change the front wing setup after qualifying, lowering it for the race. This change can be made between the qualifying and race sessions and gives you the best of both worlds: the fastest lap time in qualifying and increased top speed for the race.

F1 24 China race strategy

The Shanghai International Circuit isn’t too punishing on tyre wear. The long straights allow the tyres to cool down between corner sequences. However, the long corners of turn 1, 7, 8 and 12 all put a lot of strain on the tyres, especially the front left tyre. This is because each of these corners is incredibly long.

Longer corners will push the weight of your car towards the outside front tyre. During an entire China race, either online or offline, in F1 24, you will need to watch the temperature of the front left tyre as it is the tyre that will wear the fastest. You can lower the pressure on your front left tyre to prevent some temperature buildup. This can help reduce overall wear throughout a long race stint.

You can utilise a one-stop race strategy at China in F1 24, as we saw during the 2024 Chinese Grand Prix in April. Drivers such as Lando Norris and Charles Leclerc only pitted once, switching from medium to hard tyres. In some scenarios, it may be quicker to run a two-pit-stop strategy using the soft, medium, and hard tyres.

Starting the race on soft tyres can be very beneficial around the Chinese track. The first few corners are incredibly long and quite slow. If you have good grip from a set of soft tyres, you can often position your car on the outside of these corners and make up a few easy positions at the start of the Grand Prix.