F1 22 Controller Settings Guide: Improve Your Precision With a Controller (2024)

Disclaimer: Some of the links on this page may be affiliate links. We earn a commission from any sale after clicking an affiliate link. Find out more.

Racing F1 22 with a controller can be a little tricky at first. The cars in F1 22 are incredibly fast and can corner with a lot of speed. This makes controlling them at high speed with just a small joystick a bit of a challenge. And that’s not even to mention trying to accelerate without spinning our wheels.

It’s safe to say that controller racers may be at a little bit of a disadvantage compared to those racing with a physical wheel. But that isn’t to say this has to be the case!There are plenty of F1 22 racers who are incredibly fast and consistent using a controller.

With a few small settings changes, you can really increase the amount of precision and control you have over cars in F1 22. These controller settings should help you no matter your skill level.

If you’re looking for the best F1 22 racing wheel settings, view our detailed force feedback guide. This guide includes the best force feedback settings for all racing wheels on F1 22.

Watch our video guide on the best F1 22 controller settings

Calibration

The calibration menu is one of the first places you should start when setting up your controller in F1 22. Here you can test that all of the functions and inputs are working correctly. And we can also start to change our settings to increase your precision with a controller.

Test your inputs are being recognised

The first thing you’ll want to do is to quickly check that your controller is working correctly. Do this by starting the button test. You’ll see this icon in the bottom right corner. Simply press the correct button to start the test.

You can now start to move your analogue stick from side to side to check that you’re steering inputs are being recognised. You should see the bar on the right-hand side moving from -100 throughout to 100.

If you can hit both -100 and 100 this means your controller is reading the full range of your analogue stick. If you can’t quite reach 100 on either side, don’t worry, I’ll look at how to fix this in a minute.

Repeat this step with both triggers to ensure your brake and throttle inputs are being correctly read. Again, you should be able to reach 100 when pressing either trigger fully.

With that done, close the button test as we can now start to adjust some controller settings.

Adjusting the calibration settings

You will see on the left of the screen that we have a deadzone, linearity and saturation setting for all three inputs we just tested. These all affect the relevant input in the same way.

Deadzone explained

Your deadzone is an indication of how much you need to move or press an input before it is registered. Essentially, increasing this setting for either the steering, throttle or braking will increase the deadzone at the start of the input.

For example, if you increase the steering deadzone, you will be able to slightly move your analogue stick without any steering input being registered. This is handy if your car feels twitchy, or if the steering is moving when driving in a straight line.

Linearity explained

The linearity changes the linearity curve of your input. This will change the sensitivity of your inputs towards the start of their motion. Adjusting your linearity will make your initial small steering inputs much less sensitive. This will give you greater levels of precision while performing these steering inputs.

It does however reduce the amount of precision when making large inputs. However, a lot of time can be found in F1 22 from mastering your input smoothness. Increasing your linearity will help with this. It will dramatically reduce the twitchy feeling that you can get when racing with a controller.

Saturation explained

The saturation setting for your throttle, brake and steering will increase the overall sensitivity of your inputs. Increasing this setting will reduce how far you have to press a trigger or move your analogue stick to achieve the same amount of input.

This is incredibly useful if you were unable to register 100 on any of the button tests.

For example, increasing your throttle saturation will allow you to hit 100% throttle input earlier in your trigger pull. Reducing it a lot could mean that you’ll be hitting full throttle by only pulling the trigger around half of its normal distance.

You won’t want to mess with saturation too much. However, if you couldn’t hit 100 on any of the button tests you can increase the relevant saturation slightly. After each increase re-test your buttons and keep adjusting until you are happy you can hit 100 on the button test. That should be the point that you stop increasing the saturation.

Best controller calibration settings

• Steering deadzone – 3
• Steering linearity – 40
• Steering saturation– 0
• Throttle deadzone– 0
• Throttle linearity– 50
• Throttle saturation– 0
• Brake deadzone– 0
• Brake linearity– 35
• Brake saturation– 0

The ideal controller settings that I’m using for F1 22 is mainly focused around adjusting the linearity for all inputs. I’ve started by increasing the steering deadzone ever so slightly. This eliminates any wandering when driving in a straight line at speed.

Next, I’ve increased the steering linearity to 40. I’ve done this to give myself more precise control when applying fine controller inputs. You’ll require a lot of precision in F1 22 when cornering, positioning your car and battling on track. Having extra precision over small, detailed inputs certainly helps.

Then I’ve also increased the throttle linearity and brake linearity. The throttle linearity has been increased to 50. This helps when exiting slower corners. It is very easy to break traction and spin your rear wheels in F1 22. Extra precision when applying throttle inputs is extremely helpful.

I’ve set the brake linearity setting to 35. With the brake, we’ll generally be applying a large amount of input to slow the car down. This makes the linearity of the brake trigger a little less important than the steering and throttle.

However, having some extra precision as we start to reduce the amount of brake pressure helps us manage our trail braking.

Best controller force feedback settings

• Vibration & force feedback strength – 150
• On track effects – 100
• Rumble strip effects – 100
• Off track effects – 75
• Wheel damper – 50
• Understeer enhance – On
• Maximum wheel rotation – 290°

Force feedback settings explained

The force feedback settings in F1 22 affect controllers just like they do with a racing wheel. While a racing wheel will be able to have much more defined and realistic force feedback. It is still very useful when racing F1 22 with a controller.

Vibration & force feedback strength

Changing the main force feedback strength setting to 150 will increase the overall strength of all controller vibrations. It will mean you’ll feel a lot more vibration in your controller at all points. This is great as you’ll have more indications of when your car is losing grip and how the track feels.

With the current generation of controllers, both the Xbox Elite Series 2 and the PS5 Dualsense controller have vibration in the triggers. This is invaluable when it comes to racing F1 22 with a controller.

The vibrations ins the triggers will notify you when your car is losing grip. Your brake trigger will start to vibrate when you’re about to lock a wheel. And your throttle trigger will tell you when you’re about to break traction under acceleration.

Increasing the overall force feedback strength will increase these sensations.

On track, off track and rumble strip effects

I have set both the on track effects and rumble strip effects to 100 to give us the most amount of feedback possible. I have set the off track effects lower to 75 to make it a little easier to get back on track.

However, these three settings are entirely down to personal preference. Play about with them until you’re comfortable with how much your controller is vibrating.

Wheel damper and understeer enhance

I would recommend leaving the wheel damper setting at 50 as this doesn’t directly affect controllers. And the same applies to understeer enhance.

Maximum wheel rotation

The maximum wheel rotation is an interesting setting for controller gamers. When using a racing wheel, this setting changes how much you have to turn your steering wheel to reach the maximum lock. However, on a controller, it behaves a little differently.

We can actually decrease the maximum wheel rotation to around 280-290 to give us even greater levels of precision when steering with the analogue stick. By reducing this setting, you will be reducing how much you can actually turn the steering wheel.

But by doing this, you will gain extra precision while making steering inputs. Don’t push this too far and lower it below around 280, otherwise, you won’t be able to turn around some tighter corners in F1 22.

If you’re racing with a sim racing wheel, force feedback is even more important. View all of our recommended force feedback settings for F1 22 for the most popular racing wheels.

Customise your controls

The final part of your controller settings to customise are your button bindings. Here, you can change what each button on your controller does, and what it controls in game.

This is especially useful if you’re using a premium controller such as the Xbox Elite Series 2. These controllers give you additional inputs such as triggers on the rear which can be used in F1 22.

View the best controllers for F1 22 for all consoles.

Many of the default button bindings in F1 22 are OK. You’ll have your main controls such as activating DRS, the pit limiter and overtake mode already assigned to the best buttons for the job. And your gears will be assigned to your shoulder bumpers.

If you’re using a controller with additional buttons on the rear like the Xbox Elite controller. I would recommend using the rear buttons for your gear shifting.

However, there are a few inputs that you should certainly change. These are the look inputs. By default, they’ll be set to be controlled by your right analogue stick. However, you’ll rarely use this feature while racing as you have pretty good vision from the in-game cameras.

I would highly recommend changing these four inputs to something that is used more often. I’d recommend setting them to control your brake bias and on-throttle differential.

Both of these settings are used a lot during a race, with real-world Formula 1 drivers changing these settings multiple times a lap. This will give you very quick control over making car adjustments in between corners.

To change your button mapping in F1 22;

1. Head over to the settings menu, then navigate to ‘Controls, Vibration and Force Feedback’.
2. Then select the racing wheel or controller that you wish to use. Click ‘Edit mappings’.
3. Scroll down the list to find the input that you wish to change.
4. Click the input you wish to change, and then press the button you want to change it to.
5. Save and leave this menu to finish button mapping.

View our F1 22 controls guide to view the default controls

Overview

With these ideal controller settings, you should be able to drive with much better precision in F1 22. You should feel like you have much more control over your car as well as improving the ease of making car adjustments mid-race.