F1 24 Guide: The best tips and tricks for beginners

F1 24 once again offers a whole range of driving aids that are extremely useful, especially for beginners, to keep the Formula 1 racing cars travelling at over 300 km/h on the track. With steering assist and brake assist, these sometimes even intervene in the gameplay, while the anti-lock braking system and traction control open up the steering when braking or prevent the tyres from spinning.

Whilst these driving aids can be very useful, especially for newcomers, they will slow you down in the long run. So learn to get along as quickly as possible without many of the driving aids in order to be faster.

In particular, you can leave the anti-lock braking system and the traction aid activated alongside the pit stop aid. However, you should definitely switch off the ERS assistance, as this does not make ideal use of the additional horsepower. Up to 1.5 seconds faster lap times are possible if you use the ERS itself.

So make sure you practice getting along without the driving aids. It’s worth it in the long run.

F1 24 can now be controlled better than ever with the controller, thanks to the new driving behaviour. Those who play with a steering wheel have much less of an advantage than in previous years.

The virtual rear-view mirror can also be set here, for example, which offers a real advantage. This means you can always see exactly what’s going on behind your car and whether another driver is about to overtake.

In gameplay terms, this means that you shift down a gear before a fast combination of bends, for example, and the engine brakes for you using the corresponding friction and compression forces alone.

Your racing car will not decelerate as much as when using the normal brake, but you can still take fast corners with it. This in turn results in faster lap times than if you were to use the normal brake and gives you up to 1-2 seconds advantage on the lap time.

Traction and aerodynamics are better, which results in a more accessible gaming experience. Thanks to the lower top speed, it is also easier to keep the racing cars on the track, while the Formula 2 races are shorter.

In the first few laps, you can familiarise yourself with the circuits, their curves and special features. The game always provides you with the best lap time of comparably faster other players as ghost data so that you can see on the track where your competitors may have been faster and where they have lost time.

Then look for the ghost cars of other players that are slightly faster than your best lap time. This provides an easy but constant challenge from which you will ultimately benefit and become faster.

In F1 24, you can create and save your own setups for your car and customise them for different tracks. These vehicle setups have a huge impact on grip, handling, acceleration or maximum speed and have an enormous effect on the driving behaviour of the cars.

You can adjust the setups in the pit lane on each course. The game always gives you five presets that favour faster cornering speeds (good for tight circuits such as Monaco or Singapore) or give you more top speed for fast circuits such as Monza or Spa.

These presets are a good starting point from which you can further customise the setup. Try out different settings, but don’t change too many parameters at once – otherwise you won’t know which change had which effect.

In “Hotlap” mode, on the other hand, the additional energy is released more evenly, which does not deliver quite as much power, but the energy is not discharged as quickly and you can use it for longer over the course of the lap.

Lift-and-coast is a process that regulates the petrol flow rate. If you are driving down a straight as fast as possible, you should take your foot off the accelerator at the end (just before the braking point), which reduces petrol consumption to almost zero and recharges the ERS.