The Shanghai International Circuit in China is finally returning to the official F1 calendar in 2024 after a 5 year break. It’s been on the last few games as a bonus track, but now it’s finally back in a standard season calendar. I’ve got to say I’ve always liked this track and it’s always included in every career mode season I play.

 

With twisty, technical sections, prolonged corners, and a massive back straight, China has got a bit of everything to test a car’s performance. Normally, it’s been a medium-high downforce circuit, but on F1 24, wings levels have to be tweaked downwards from what’s expected to stay competitive on the straights. Therefore, you’re looking more at medium downforce or just below it for a setup.

Here’s a general baseline dry race setup for China for a controller user:

• Wings – 22/24
• Diff – 10/45/50
• Camber – -3.50/-2.20/0.00/0.18 (LLL/18)
• Suspension –  40-6-15-9-25-57
• Brakes – 100% Pressure/53% Bias
• Tyre pressures – Front right 28.0, Front left 28.5; Rears maximum

Hotlap With This Setup

 

More Setup Info

Here’s some more info and tips on creating your own tweaked and customised setup.

Wing levels – In my very first races round here, I tried 28/30 wings and got eaten up on the straights – no chance of this working in a race. So you’re going to have to set your rear wing around 25 or less to be able to defend on the straights. For me, 22/24 or 20/22 wings seems to work OK on a pad in terms of giving you the straight line speed you need, but also keeping some kind of stability on the handling over longer stints. Try anything from 25 to 20 to see what works for you (you can also experiment with a higher wing level for the sprint Q/R, and then lower them just before you go out for the Main Quali session if you decide it doesn’t really work and you want lower wings. Setups can be amended very briefly just before you drive out for Main Quali during Sprint weekends).

Tyre Pressures – This track stresses and therefore overheats the tyres very quickly with all the prolonged corners, so it’s realistically max pressures all tyres to keep temps down. The front right tyre heats noticeably less than the others, and can sometimes struggle to get up to temp on the hard tyre, so you might want to drop the front pressures by a couple of PSI down from the maximum, and keep the front right a bit lower than the front left.

Intermediate Conditions – For light rain sessions, your dry setup should work OK, but always space the rear wing 3 clicks above the front when using a pad for better stability and traction. Also, you can add 1-2 clicks of wing or use the same levels you do in the dry depending on your preference.

Full Wet Conditions – Full heavy rain conditions, I’d add a bunch more wing and keep the 3 click spacing for better stability. Then it’s just the usual tweaks of softening the suspension and roll bars and raising the ride height for easier handling.

Here’s a baseline wet race setup for China for a pad user:

• Wings – 30/33
• Diff – 10/55/50
• Camber – -3.50/-2.20/0.00/0.20
• Suspension – 38-5-14-8-33-61
• Brakes – 100% Pressure/53% Bias
• Tyre pressures – Fronts 28.0/Rears maximum

Whatever setup you use for full wet conditions, it’s got to make traction easy for smooth corner exits, or you’ll lost a bunch of time with the back end stepping out all the time in lower gears. If you’re still struggling, keep raising the Off Throttle Diff (dampens the rotation) and make sure your On Throttle Diff is at minimum for easiest to apply traction.

Bonus Setup Resources

There’s different setup routes you can go down here, and single lap Time Trial setups differ quite a lot from stable race setups for sure. Here’s some more resources to check out if you’re looking for more aggressive or just different setup styles:

• My template setup that I usually start with on most tracks also works fine round this track. Just port over the wing and Differential settings from the setup posted above, and it’ll be a decent baseline to get started with.
• F1laps.com China page – Another car setup forum with pages for every track, and loads of custom setups posted, both TT and race, all cars, all conditions.
• Sim Racing Centre (Premium) – Need to buy these setups, but they’re higher end ones designed by eSports drivers. Can be potentially faster but will be harder to port over to a controller without some tweaking. Their support team may be able to help you with this. More advanced option.

Racing & Strategy Tips

China can be a tricky weekend to navigate firstly because of the changeable weather, but also the weekend format. Here’s a few tips for getting through a race here.

Sprint Format – China is the first race on this year’s calendar that take the sprint weekend format. This means your weekend goes as follows – Practice 1 —- Sprint Quali—– Sprint Race —– Main Qualifying — Main Race. Therefore you’ve only got one practice session before you’re straight away into the quali and race sessions – just one session to get a setup dialled in and the practice programmes done. Choose the Harder tyre allocation before the weekend starts if you want to free up two sets of softs for the single practice session. The Balanced allocation will give you one hard and one soft set for the sole practice session.

Parc Ferme – Also, for sprint format weekends, car setups are locked into “parc ferme” as soon as you drive out in Sprint Quali, very briefly unlocked again just before you go out in Main Quali, and then locked again for the remainder of the weekend. So there’s very little chance to change your car setup once the single practice session is over. Also, be sure to change any engine parts right away after the practice session to avoid any penalties.

Tyres (Qualifying) – You might only have one set of softs available for the Sprint Quali session. If you do, be sure to only go out in the last 5 minutes of the session, when the track is “rubbered in” and at it’s fastest. Same for Main Qualifying – you might only have two sets of softs, so again be sure to save one set for the last few minutes. Track evolution is a real thing on the latest F1 games and you can set faster lap times right at the end of qualifying sessions.

ERS (Qualifying) – You’ve got lots of excess Overtake mode to use on Qualifying laps – about 10-12 seconds. The main pit straight, back straight and coming out of turn 4 are good places to use a couple of second burst of Overtake mode to boost acceleration and top speed. Keep an eye on the green ERS bar on Quali laps, and aim to drain it just as you finish the lap.

Tyre Strategy – The soft tyre can hold up for a few laps in a 25% race before going onto the medium or hard, but can’t really be used in sprints or longer 50% races, where it’s a medium-hard strategy or just the medium for sprint runs.

Kerbs – The kerbs in the twisty sector 2 especially are raised and lethal, readily spitting you off the track if you mount them while on the throttle. Use a setup that allows you to consistently thread the car through this section without clipping the kerbs. Dial out any excessive pointy-ness by adjusting wings and Off Throttle Diff settings to reduce rotation.

Defending (Race) – For holding position in races, it’s pretty simple. Just save all your ERS battery to use only along the long back straight, and as long as your rear wing is set low enough and you’ve got one-half to two-thirds of your battery free as you enter this straight, you should be able to defend. Then try to save another very short burst to use along the pit straight as the AI will also sometimes have a go there as well. But for pure defending, don’t use it anywhere else in the lap to let it recharge.

Then just focus on getting a strong exit onto the back straight and then just deploy a big chunk along that straight every lap (I was able to defend and hold position OK using this strategy with 22/24 wings). Also, save that little bit extra for the very last lap, as that’s when the AI really go for it an deploy a load of Overtake mode on that back straight to try and get a move done.