F1 22 China Car Setup - Optimised Race Setup (2024)

F1 22 » F1 22 China Car Setup – Best Race Setup

China hasn't been on the Formula 1 calendar for a couple of years. But Codemasters have just added the track to the F1 22 game. Here is the best car setup for long distance races around China.

• Written by MjolnirSeptember 13, 2022 Tags: Setups, F1 22

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F1 22 China Setup

China is a fan favourite track and is a circuit which is incredibly fun to drive. I think EA and Codemasters realised how fun this track is to race around in the F1 games, which is why they have just added it to F1 22.

Now, there are a fair few tricky corner sequences including the very long turns 1, 2, 3 and 4. These long sweeping corners make China a track that is very hard on your tyres. Your left tyres in particular are very prone to overheating.

There is a pretty good mixture of high-speed corners such as turns 7 and 8 along with some slower corners such as turns 6 and 14. And then there is the incredibly long back straight where top speed is crucial if you want to have a good race.

This combination of fast and slow corners along with long straights makes the Chinese track a tricky one to create a car setup for. You will always be compromising on some part of your car setup.

As with most of our F1 22 car setups, I’ve created a setup that focuses on stability first. You will need a very well-balanced car as a few of the longer corners can cause you to lose control of the rear if your car setup isn’t just right.

And just to throw another variable into the mix, the Chinese track features a few kerbs that are incredibly high. This means we will have to run an extremely unusual ride height setup to ensure we don’t bottom out or damage the underfloor of the car.

I’m going to run through my best car setup for China for race conditions. This setup isn’t going to be a time trial setup, instead, it’ll be a car setup that gives you a comfortable car to drive for long distances in a race.

It’s very drive-able and stable throughout the whole lap, even when your tyres are starting to wear. And it ensures that you have good pace and straight-line speed so you aren’t mugged down the long back straight.

China Car Setup video

Aerodynamics

So let’s jump straight in and look at the aero setup first. If you have looked at any of the time trial setups, they all typically have a higher front wing than the rear. This is because, in time trial, you have a lot more grip at the rear of the car than you do during a race.

I have gone the other way and increased the rear downforce slightly more than the front. This will help when accelerating through fast corners such as turns 4, the esses of turns 7 and 8 and when accelerating out of the long sweeping turn 13.

A focus on rear downforce won’t compromise your straight-line speed too much, so I’ve gone with a setup of 19 on the front wing and 21 on the rear.

If you don’t mind a slightly looser car, you can switch this around and go 21 on the front and 19 on the rear. You’ll have a little less rear stability but slightly better front-end turn-in.

Transmission

For the transmission, I’ve gone low on both on and off throttle diff settings. A low on-throttle diff of 57% will help you get the power down easier out of the slower corners. It’s very important to get good acceleration out of turns 13 and 14 and this on-throttle diff setup will help with that.

For the off-throttle diff, I’ve lowered it right down to 50%. This will help with a little extra rotation at slower speeds which offsets some of the understeer that may come from our aero setup.

Suspension Geometry

The suspension geometry is a pretty standard setup. I did play about with the suspension geometry, reducing the camber to help with tyre temperatures. But this approach simply lost more lap time and didn’t really recoup enough tyre temperature to be worth sticking with.

So I’ve reverted back to a right, right, left, left approach for the suspension geometry. Go with -2.5 and -1.0 on the camber, and 0.05 and 0.20 on the toe setup.

Suspension Setup

The suspension setup is where we really do a lot of our stability work. I’ve softened the suspension all around, giving you a very stable car. This will help both over kerbs and with overall stability.

I have run with a stiffer front suspension and ARB which again will introduce a little understeer but helps with stability.

Go with 3 on the front suspension and ARB, and 1 on the rear suspension and anti-roll bar.

Then for the ride height, I had to raise the car right up to the roof! There are two very aggressive kerbs in particular that are very hard to avoid if you’re pushing hard.

The kerbs on the exit of turns 10 and 13 will give you all sorts of trouble if you run a low ride height, and they can even cause underfloor damage to your car.

For this reason, I’ve raised the ride height up to 10 at the front and 9 at the rear. This gives you just enough clearance over these kerbs to avoid too much disruption and damage.

Brakes

For the brakes, you should go with our normal approach. I’ve set the brake pressure to 100%, and the brake bias to 50%.

Tyre Setup

And then for the tyre pressures, I’ve had to set them to be incredibly low. As I mentioned China is a tyre killer. The long sweeping corners will destroy your tyres during a race so we have to do everything we can to protect them.

Reduce your front pressures as low as they’ll go at 22.5. And then run an offset rear tyre setup of 21.0psi on the rear right tyre and 20.8 psi on the rear left.

The front and rear left do take the most punishment around China, so this offset approach will help mitigate that a little.

View the best racing wheels for F1 22

Overview

And that will round out our car setup for China in F1 22. I am so glad this track has been added to F1 22 as it is one of my favourites to race around. And with this car setup, you’ll be able to survive and dominate in longer-distance races.

Let me know how you find this setup in the comments below.