Formula 1 racing is back with the latest installment in the series, which is F1 23. Get ready to enjoy exhilarating races in some of the most famous racing venues in the world. Compared to the previous edition, this year’s game focuses more on improvements from last year alongside a few extra game modes.
Complete Beginner’s Guide
For your convenience, this guide is divided into different sections to help you track what you are looking for easily.
Overview
One of the biggest additions in the game is the return of the Braking Point game mode from F1 22. This is a continuation of the mode from the previous installment, and it story based with an emphasis on cutscenes and characters. Another new addition is the F1 World mode, where players can create and customize their cars for competing in multiplayer or solo events.
Furthermore, two new tracks have been added to the game. The Losail International Circuit in Qatar and the Strip Circuit in Las Vegas.
Another big change comes in the form of modifications to the game’s mechanics. The driving physics in the game have been modified to make racing slightly easier. Specifically, the problem was the lack of traction at slow speeds. This resulted in slow starts and corners being tricky to navigate. In this edition, this problem has been addressed, with cars now able to find traction much more easily.
Lastly, there have been minor changes in how car steups work. This includes modifying the values of different attributes of the car. Although modification of these attributes does not drastically change the game experience, it does allow for finer tuning, and you should see a lot more variety in car setups from now on.
Initial Steps
Starting up F1 23 for the first time, we recommend that you get acclimatized to the game overall. The best thing to do is to jump into a Timed Trial or the Grand Prix mode. Since this is a racing game, most of your time will be spent on the track. Therefore it is crucial to get familiar with the game’s controls and mechanics in the first few play sessions.
Next, we recommend using the assists menu to help familiarize yourself with the game’s controls. This is especially recommended for new players as the assist informs you of when to reduce your speed at turns. With the assist, enable head into the Grand Prix mode to experience the thrill of racing without any consequences.
Lastly, calibrating your controller or racing wheel is important since these dictate how well you perform in the game. After the first few session in Grand Prix, head into the Calibration menu to tweak a few settings to find the optimal one for yourself.
Calibrating AI Difficulty
Choosing the difficulty of the AI is one of the most crucial aspects of this game. This difficulty dictates your overall experience when playing in offline modes. Hence it is necessary to find the difficulty level that helps you keep up with the competitor.
Setting the difficulty too high will make you unable to keep up with the surrounding cars as you find yourself further back on the grid. Alternatively, setting it too low will make you win races easily with a whole-lap advantage. This sense of accomplishment will wear off as you keep winning all the races, as there is no competition.
Ideally, the AI difficulty should be set above the ultimate pace of your car. This will ensure that you challenge cars for your position, making you a better and faster driver overall. Finding this difficulty level is the real problem. For this, we recommend you go into a Grand Prix session with a One Shot qualifying mode.
Set the AI difficulty to 75 before starting the session. Additionally, turn on equal performance when selecting the team to race with since this will allow all the cars to have equal stats. Head into the mode and finish a lap to help you gauge your performance. After completing the lap, check your performance on the scoreboard. If you are towards the top, then increase the difficulty. Alternatively, if you are towards the lower end, decrease the difficulty.
The general rule of thumb for all tracks in this game is that each increment or decrement in the AI difficulty by 10 points increases or decreases the AI times by 1 second. Use this to your advantage, and keep adjusting the difficulty until you hit that sweet spot. After you lap with the AI, consistently test this difficulty on 5 different tracks to ensure it is right for you. For pushing yourself to the limits, we recommend setting the difficulty to just above your skill level.
Driving Assists
Using Assists is a great feature for beginners since it helps make the cars easier to drive and learn the tracks faster. Assists such as Steering and Braking should not be used since they interfere with the overall gameplay. Anti-lock Braking System, Traction Control and Automatic Gears are all great to start off with.
We recommend using the Dynamic Racing Line assist. This is a phenomenal addition since, on the track, it shows players when to accelerate and when to apply brakes. Over time as you become comfortable with the game’s mechanics, we recommend lowering the number of assists you are using and eventually disabling all of them.
Practice
Since players will be spending almost all their time on the track, practicing is crucial to ensure that they are able to progress in the game quicker. In the first few hours after setting the AI difficulty and calibrating controls we recommend practicing in the Time Trial mode.
Practicing in this mode is recommended since it provides with you with the optimal weather conditions and tyre and track temperatures. This allows you to utilize the car to it maximum and learn all its characteristics. A great tip is to follow the car in font of you and shadow it accelerating and braking movements. This is one of the best ways to improve your lap times since you are using the car in front of you as a reference point.
Game Modes
The variety of game modes in F1 23 ensures that players always have something to play. After mastering the game’s mechanics in Time Trials and Grand Prix modes, we recommended that you go in either Braking Point or F1 World.
Braking Point is sort of a scripted game mode with the cinematics and focus on acting and characters. It is good to hop into if you are looking for gameplay mixed in with a good story. F1 World is sort of the Ultimate Team for F1. It allows players to participate is various events to create their own cars and customize them.
Choosing a Team
F1 23 has all the teams and drivers competing in the real season. Choosing a team is important since each team has different drivers and car which impacts the gameplay performance. Each car is build different as well so the camera angle and steering wheel will also differ. At the end choosing a team and driver can come down to either your personal preference or one that will ensure that you racing with other cars towards the front of the grid.
Car Setups
Customizing the attributes of your car has effects in the race. The nature of the track affects which car type you will be using. For instance in fast tracks such as Monzo you need a car with a low drag setup to minimize the loss of speed due to air resistance.
The downforce of your car is impacted by its Aerodynamics. Higher downforce slows the car along the straights while allowing it to move faster at corner. Lower downforce makes the car faster on straights and slow on turns.
Transmission
The Transmission of your car dictates how each rear wheel works together when accelerating or deccelerating. Modifying these setting has an effect on how much speed your car has when entering a corner and how much traction is has when exiting a corner.
Suspension Geometry
The Suspension Geometry affects the position of the wheels relative to the car. This has a direct impact on how much contact the wheels have with the ground. This in turn affects the wear of the tyres and how much drag there is down low straights.
Suspension
The Suspension setup changes how soft or stiff your suspension is. Stiff suspensions generally provide a more stable experience as they help to increase speed through faster corners. Alternatively, soft suspension means that you can go above curbs with ease while keeping your speed.
Brakes
Adjusting the Brakes settings has a big impact on how fast your car comes a stop when applying the brakes. This is important since you need to keep your speed when braking at corners to ensure that you are not overtaken by opposing cars.
Tyres
Using the Tyres settings you can control the amount of pressure in all four tyres. This affects how fast the tyres wear down in different temperatures and in general due to traction with the ground.
F1 23 offers a plethora of ways to enjoy racing through different modes and customization options. Using this beginner’s guide we hope that you enjoy taking your first steps into the thrilling world of racing. We would love to hear from you in the comments below if you have any comments or suggestions.
ALSO READ: F1 23: Australian GP Best Setup Guide
