The Silverstone Circuit in Great Britain is a classic high speed track and great fun to race around. Opinions are mixed on the new layout in place since 2010, but I prefer it to the old layout.

 

For a race setup, you usually need medium downforce here but with the insane overpowered AI straight line speed, you may need to err towards medium-low downforce setup on F1 24.

Here’s a general baseline dry race setup for Silverstone for a pad user:

• Wings – 18/20 or 20/22
• Diff – 10/45/50
• Camber/Toe – -2.50/-2.20/0.00/0.17
• Suspension – 38-5-18-13-26-58
• Brakes – 95% Pressure/50% Bias
• Tyre Pressures – Maximum all tyres

This setup has been a work in progress, since I initially used wings in the 20s that proved too high, and have had to go a lot lower than expected to make the setup competitive in a race.

Additional Setup Considerations

I’m finding the setups on this game a bit of puzzles, but here’s my current thoughts on what you can tweak with them

Wing levels – Really hard to figure out. In my first attempt here, using 22/24 wings was great in Quali and the first stint of the race, but I was getting destroyed by the AI on the straights in the second stint. Next time, I’ve tried 18/20 and it was much better in terms of defending. I’d try anything from 18/20 to 20/22, but not above that on this game as the AI straight line speed is way over-powered.

Wing spacing – Setting the rear wing 2 clicks above the front is my baseline for this game, as it offers great stability and traction, allowing me to get on the power out of corners really well. 3 clicks above in the wet. You can try inverting them and setting the rear wing lower, a lot of more aggressive wheel setups are doings. But a wheel and a pad are two very different input devices, and using aggressive wing spacing makes it harder to control as the tyres wear.

Tyre Pressures – Silverstone is another one of those tracks that does stress and overheat the tyres even on this game, so it’s max pressures all tyres as a baseline to keep temps down. The front right tyre does overheat a little less, so you can lower this pressure by 1 PSI if you want, but it’s probably not going to make a massive difference. Keep them all at maximum for simplicity.

Differential – This is one track where I’d definitely recommend keeping the On Throttle Diff low or at minimum, as you need easy to control traction especially coming into that tricky chicane that finishes the lap.

Intermediate Conditions – Your dry setup will work OK, but I’d raise the wings 1-2 clicks and space them 3 clicks apart for better stability (I’d use something like 20/23). Soften your suspension and raise the ride height 1-2 clicks, and use minimum On Throttle diff for easiest traction.

Full Wet Conditions – For heavy rain races, you need to make some more obvious adjustments. Stability and traction are key, and you can add a bunch more downforce (4-6 extra clicks of wing).

Here’s a suggested wet race setup for Silverstone for a pad user:

• Wings – 24/27
• Diff – 10/55/50
• Camber – -3.50/-2.20/0.00/0.17
• Suspension –  35-4-15-10-28-61
• Brakes – 95% Pressure/53% Bias
• Tyre pressures – Max pressures all tyres

More Setup Resources For Silverstone 

There’s some super aggressive but hard to control setups for this track for sure. If you’re looking for these TT style setups, or just more customized setups for certain cars, here are some more directories to check out:

• If you want something with easier handling to get started with round here, my generic starter setup with the wings levels and Diff settings ported over from also works OK as a baseline round here.
• F1laps.com Silverstone page – Another car setup forum with pages for every track, and loads of custom setups posted, both TT and race, all cars, all conditions.
• F1gamesetup.com – An even more specialized resource with custom setups, every car and every track, wet and dry weather.
• Sim Racing Centre (Premium) – Paid resource that offers individual track or entire game setups and strategy guides. Leaning more towards wheel users and aggressive setups, but plenty of support available to tailor setups for the controller.

Bonus Racing Tips

Here’s some extra tips and considerations for racing round Silverstone.

ERS (Qualifying) – You’ve got plenty to use round here, like 10-12 seconds of extra Overtake mode to boost your straight line speed in Quali sessions. For me, using multiple several second bursts coming onto the hotlap, in the two DRS zones and coming out of Luffield, together with the setup posted above, allowed me to stick it on pole somehow in a Sauber. Definitely use the Hotlap mode to boost top speed when playing other human players, and watch the yellow ERS bar (look to fully use it up just as you cross the line to finish the lap).

Tyre/Pit Strategy – The red soft tyre isn’t really a strong race tyre as it overheats very quickly, so for longer 50% races it’s a medium-hard strategy. For 25% races, you could try a short blast on the softs and quickly pit onto the hards, as the hard and medium tyres seem to deliver quite similar lap times in my testing at least. The “undercut”- where you come in 1-2 laps early and jump a bunch of cars –  can also work sometimes, but it’s not as powerful as at other tracks.

Avoid Damage – The pit lane and therefore the pit stop time loss here is painfully long – like 30+ seconds. Therefore, while it’s true on all tracks, this is really a track where you don’t want to be damaging your front wing at the start and needing to pit in the early laps. In competitive leagues and 50% races, it’s going to basically ruin your race. So be extra cautious at the start here and keep your front wing safe

Defending (Race) – Provided you’re using low enough wings (still a work in progress for me – around 20 seems safe), the ERS recovers enough for you to use a simple strategy for defending against AI. Use 30-40% your ERS coming out of turn 4 into the first DRS zone, and another 30-40% coming onto the second DRS zone on the Hangar Straight. It recoups enough that you can just keep doing this every lap. As long as you get good exits and have low enough wings, you can fend off AI cars just sticking to this strategy every lap and not using the ERS anywhere else. But save even more for the final lap, where the AI really go for it and deploy everything, especially along the Hangar Straight DRS zone.

Mastering Silverstone (Detailed Track Guide)