The Albert Park Circuit in Melbourne has been on the F1 calendar since 1996 and was reprofiled into a faster, more flowing version since 2022.

 

Honestly, I like all versions of the track and this one will certainly test your racing and defending ability with 4 DRS zones.

And because it’s so DRS heavy, the trend ever since 2022 on all the games has been to run lower wings than you might expect to stay competitive on the straights, with a low-medium downforce setup usually optimal for races.

Here’s my current general dry race setup for Melbourne for a controller:

• Wings – 17/18 or 28/30
• Diff – 10/55
• Camber – -3.50/-2.00/0.00/0.15 (LLL/0.15)
• Suspension –  41-2-12-16-21-49
• Brakes – 100% Pressure/55% Bias
• Tyre pressures – Maximum all tyres.

This is only a baseline for my very first career mode race here (and very first race full stop on F1 25), so it’s definitely subject to change. But it provided good stability on a pad and can be competitive up to least 100 AI difficulty level depending on driving style.

Hotlap With This Setup

 

More Setup Info

This setup is a work in progress, but here’s some extra pointers on optimizing it.

Wing levels –  With 4 DRS zones, you need wings on the lower side here or you’ll get blown past on the straights. You can try anything from 15 to 22 wings and whatever spacing you prefer (front wing or rear wing higher for turn in vs stability). But have the rear wing much above 19 or 20 and you’re going to be vulnerable on the straights.

Update – you can go for a higher downforce setup on this game – so something like 28/29 or 28/30. It will pull you round the corners better but will leave you vulnerable on all the DRS straights. It depends whether you want something that’s more stable and easier to control, or faster. In any case, my 17/18 setup posted is still pretty stable on the hard tyre especially, even for 10+ laps. So I’d stick with lower wings around 17 to 20 at Melbourne.

Stability vs Pace – Two crucial settings here for stability over a race are setting the Off Throttle Diff at 55 (provides just the right amount of rotation to get back on the throttle smoothly out of corners on a pad), and adding a bit of rear toe to stabilise the rear end. If you want more outright rotation and therefore potential lap time, drop the Off Diff to 45 or 40 (can do this temporarily for qualifying and move it back for the race), or move the toe back to the left.

Tyre Pressures – The more straightforward setting for this here (and it seems on many tracks on F1 25) is to just bump all 4 tyre pressures to max and forget about it. You can be a bit more precise and nuanced about it though, as there’s a difference between both the front and rear tyres and the left and right side in terms of overheating. The rears heat more than the front, and the left hand side tyres heat and wear a lot more than the right hand side. If you want more precise pressures for each tyre to account for these differences, setting the right hand side tyres 0.5-1 PSI lower than the left hand side ones. But it’s questionable whether doing this kind of nuanced tweaking makes much difference difference on this game.

Intermediate Conditions – For light rain intermediate sessions, your dry setup will work OK as a baseline, but maybe bump the wing levels up 1-2 clicks, and definitely space the rear wing 3 clicks above the front when using a pad for better stability. Also use minimum On Throttle Diff and raise your Off Throttle Diff by 5 clicks to dampen rotation.

Full Wet Conditions – Wet weather setups are a work in progress at the moment. But as an initial suggestion, for heavy rain, make some slightly bigger adjustments, adding 6-8 clicks of wing to your dry setup, with the 3 click spacing. Raise your Off Throttle Diff by 5-10 clicks reduce the risk of over-rotation and make traction easier out of slow corners. Soften the suspension and roll bars by a few clicks, and raise the ride height by 4-6 clicks as well.

Racing & Strategy Tips

Melbourne is a tricky race with all the DRS zones, so you need to be wily to maintain track position. Here’s some tips for getting through this weekend.

ERS (Qualifying)

You’ve got LOADS of extra ERS Overtake mode to use on a Qualifying lap to boost top speed, so you can basically spam it going onto you flying lap, plus on all the main straights as well. You’re looking to drain your battery allowance to zero just as you finish a flying lap (but there’s no simple meter bar on this year’s interface so it’s harder to track).

Tricky corners

With this year’s handing there’s some tricky corners and traction zones. Basically, you need a setup that can provide you with consistency and precise car control, as the track can be quite narrow and running off and getting dirt on your tyres seem to be punish you more in terms of lost lap time than previous games.

Turn 13 – First of all, the sharp right hander of turn 13 at the end of the final DRS straight can be really annoying at first, as even clipping the grass slightly on the left hand side can cause you to lose the car. Stay more towards the middle and brake earlier at this corner to avoid this.

Last corner (T16) – This right hander is tricky on a pad when you’re not using full TC. Try to take a wide entry line to minimize the steering angle, and progressively modulate the throttle until the car is pointing straight out the corner. Can gain or lose a lot of time all along the pit straight depending on how smooth your exit is out of this corner.

Traction zones

The turn 5 faster right hander and high speed 11-12 chicane also need carefully modulated throttle and precise steering to navigate well on a pad. The “proper” way is to gently feed the throttle in gradually and sometimes pull slightly back from 100% throttle to help with traction, but I find the cruder method of “throttle mashing” (just quickly coming on/off/on/off the trigger) helps keep the car stable in these trickier corner sections, at least when using Medium TC.

Tyre/Pit Strategy

Tyre wear is immediately obviously much higher on this year’s game; here are your approx wear rates in a standard career car for the most severe wearing tyre (front left round here):

• Soft tyre -7-8% per lap
• Medium – 5.5-6% per lap
• Hard – 4.5% per lap

Therefore it’s likely a 2 stop for a 50% race (MHH) here unless you’re very smooth or you get a safety car at just the right time (be sure to selection the Harder Tyre allocation before the weekend starts to free up two hards for the race if you want to go this route). 25% races are a one stop but you may need to go right onto the hards from softs, or just go medium-hard if you don’t want overheating issues with the soft tyre.

First Lap

With a narrow-ish track, the cars really bunch up on the first lap here and you really don’t want to be damaging your wing and having to pit on lap. Obviously, you lose the extra time having to change your wing, but dropping right to the back and out of the DRS train when there are 4 DRS zones costs you a ton of time, and it’s very hard to get back into the race. Focus on just surviving the first lap with your front nose intact by braking earlier but gentler and coasting into T1, and use the DRS train and pit strategy wisely to make up places.

Defending (Races)

With four DRS zones round here, defending is a real challenge, which is why you need low wing levels here to hold position in races. What’s more, ERS recoups much slower than on the ’24 game, so the “park the bus” strategy I recommended with my setup for last year’s game don’t really work as well round here this year against cars that are obviously much faster than you.

It’s probably better to just let much faster cars go ahead and hopefully cling onto their DRS than keep defending in every zone (you’ll totally drain your ERS very quickly round here doing that as it doesn’t recover as fast this year). With the slower recharging ERS this year, sometimes it’s better to give up position and keep hanging within 1 second of an overtaking car to use DRS yourself and give yourself a chance to recharge your battery.

For cars of similar speed, you can try defending, but you haven’t got much ERS to play with on ’25 – you can use it on only really one straight per lap and then you need to not use it and let it recharge the rest of the lap to return to where you were.

The AI cars seem to most aggressively go for it on the third DRS zone – at the end of the long full throttle section from turns 6/7 to the 11/12 chicane – so maybe save your battery usage for there. Or any of the other 3 DRS zones where they might have a go if you get a poor exit. But again sometimes it’s better to let cars through and use the DRS zones to recoup your own ERS.