F1 24 Spain Setups

The Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya in Spain has often been used as the official test track for Formula 1, only recently being replaced by Bahrain. The Spanish track is such a good test track because it contains a little bit of everything that you can find at a race track.

There are high-speed straights and a good mixture of slow, medium speed and fast corners. Each segment of Spain tests a different part of your car setup, making this a challenging circuit to create a good car setup for in F1 24.

Optimizing your car for the entirety of the Spanish track is a very hard task, but it usually results in a very well-balanced car setup. You cannot over-optimise a single segment over the others, as you will start to lose time in the part of the circuit you haven’t focused on. The best lap times come from a balanced approach.

What is the best car setup for Spain?

The best car setup for Spain is balanced, with a focus on higher downforce over top speed. There is an incredibly long straight from the last corner to the first, but the remainder of the track layout promotes a higher downforce approach.

Increasing your front and rear wing aero can help you take medium-speed and faster corners, such as turns 9, 13 and 14, with higher minimum corner speeds.

There are few very slow corners at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, which means rear traction isn’t too much of a problem. The final chicane was removed last year to promote more potential overtaking into the first corner. This was previously the slowest corner sequence, so removing it has meant we can focus a little more on the faster turns.

Considering this, a car setup with a stiffer suspension and more aggressive suspension geometry can help with minimum corner speeds and responsiveness.

The prolonged corners, such as turns 3, 4 and 12, do put a lot of stress through the tyres, making this circuit rather front-limited. To manage tyre wear during a race, especially at the front of the car, you can lower the tyre pressures and even soften the suspension slightly.

Race strategy for Barcelona

With the front-limited nature and the long sweeping corners, Barcelona can be a tricky race to manage tyre wear. Using a two-stop strategy is all but required to complete a full race distance in F1 24. So is using the hard tyres as a combination of soft and medium tyres may not last the entire race.

During a race, overtaking is possible with the two most likely spots being turns 1 and 10. Although overtakes can be made into turns 4 and 5 as well if you are much faster than the car ahead. With this in mind, running a slightly higher fuel load in a race can let you utilise higher performance modes more often to complete overtakes easier.