The Albert Park Circuit in Melbourne is home to the Australian Grand Prix, but what setup should you use there? This setup guide will help you find the answer.
Photo credit: Codemasters / EA
After multiple years without any Formula 1 action taking place in Melbourne, the Albert Park Circuit is back in action in 2022. This Sunday 10 April, the ten F1 teams will do battle in the Australian Grand Prix. While an F1 2022 game is still a while away, we expect that many of you will be wanting to replicate the action on F1 2021. However, in order to find success in Melbourne, you’ll need a good setup for your car. Thankfully for you, we have developed this fast yet drivable and beginner-friendly setup, so take a look.
Aerodynamics and Transmission
Wings on an F1 car are of the utmost importance. As such, getting the right angles on both your front and rear wings can be a complete game changer. Unlike in previous iterations of the F1 games, Melbourne requires a fair bit of downforce in F1 2021. To find your way through the quicker corners without losing too much speed, try running 8-10 on your front and rear wing respectively. The front value is enough to keep the car pointy and responsive, while a higher rear wing helps during traction zones and under braking too.
Speaking of the traction zones, there are a couple of very slippery ones in Australia. To accommodate for these, we would recommend using an on-throttle differential setting of 60%. This opens up the rear wheels to spin at slightly different speeds, which makes traction smoother while also limiting rear tyre wear. For the off-throttle setting, 54% seems to be the sweet spot.
Suspension Geometry
In general, moving the front and rear camber settings all the way over to the right aids the stability of the car while also limiting the tyre wear difficulties that sharper camber angles would bring with them. This isn’t any different at Melbourne, so running -2.50 and -1.00 for your camber settings is advisable for a race distance.
If you’re feeling confident in your control of the car, you could test moving these values around a little bit and you may find a little more speed, but for a stable, reliable car this is what we would recommend.
Then there are the toe settings, which can often feel like they don’t have much of an effect. However, it is worth tweaking these to ensure you get the most out of them. Front toe in particular doesn’t do a whole lot in F1 2021, but running a lower setting should theoretically help with front tyre wear a little.
We’ve gone for 0.07 here, but you could probably run the minimum without any difficulty. As for the rear tyres, running the maximum toe out setting of 0.50 does yield a little bit of a boost to the rear-end stability of the car.
Suspension
Then come the suspension settings themselves. Starting with the suspension stiffness, 6-1 isn’t the best in terms of outright speed over one lap, but the reduction in overall potential pace is more than worth the reliability these settings bring to the way the car feels. A stiff rear suspension will have the car pirouetting every corner if you aren’t careful. If you find yourself struggling with holding onto the car over the kerbs, consider lowering the front suspension stiffness more.
Next up we have the anti-roll bars. It’s quite important to get these right, especially when stability is your main focus. In general, F1 2021 cars feel much smoother when you run a low front anti-roll bar stiffness along with a higher value on the rear end. As such, 3-10 is our suggestion for this aspect of your Melbourne setup.
As for your ride height, the high kerbs on several parts of the Australian track mean that running a higher than usual ride height isn’t a bad idea. 6-8 is what we have opted for, but you can run your car higher if you find yourself still struggling to keep everything pointing in the right direction. A lower car is more aerodynamically efficient, but will struggle over the kerbs, especially in places such as turn 5.
Brakes and Tyres
Finally, we come to the final two aspects of the setup menu. Let’s start with the brakes, as these settings are always pretty straightforward. Running the maximum brake pressure of 100% is always nice if you can get away with it, although doing so does require you to exercise a good level of control on the brake pedal. If you find yourself locking up a lot, consider lowering this setting.
Brake bias determines how much of the car’s braking is being performed by the front brakes, and how much is being performed by the rears. Usually, the front brakes will do more work on an F1 car. However, with locking up being an occupational hazard in some of the Albert Park braking zones, a lower brake bias of 51% helps to mitigate the chances of front locking.
Due to the clockwise layout of the circuit, the left-hand tyres do more work here than those on the right of the car. Therefore, it’s a good idea to take a little more air out of the tyres on the left than those on the right, or else you will find them overheating under the strain. 24.2psi, 23.4psi, 22.7psi and 21.9psi are suitable values to run in Australia. However, if you are tough on your tyres you might still find yourself with overheating issues. If this is the case, take a bit more air out of whichever tyres you are struggling to keep cool.
If you would like to see more F1 2021 setup guides, head over to our F1 2021 guide hub!
What do you think of our Australian Grand Prix setup? Tell us on Twitter at @OverTake_gg or in the comments down below!
