Bahrain has been shuffled this year to it’s usual opening race slot to the fourth race on the calendar. It’s a fan favourite with a mix of slow and high speed corners and straights, and always delivers good racing with 3 DRS zones.

 

For pure lap time, medium-high downforce would give the better lap times. But on F1 25 as with the last few games, it’s not that simple as the over-powered AI and strong ERS/DRS combo need to be taken into account. Therefore the optimal setup for races is usually to use medium downforce.

Here’s my current general dry race setup for Bahrain for a pad user:

• Wings – 26/28 or 36/38
• Diff – 10/55
• Camber – -3.50/-2.00/0.03/0.13 (LL/0.03/0.13)
• Suspension – 41-3-14-10-22-49
• Brakes – 100% Pressure/55% Bias
• Tyre pressures – Front right 28.0, Maximum pressures all other tyres.

Recommended Tyre Allocation (Career Mode) – Balanced if doing 25%/35% races, Harder if doing 50% races

I’ve noticed traction gets quite tricky as the tyres wear on this track, so I’ve given two possible routes with the wing levels to allow for a setup that remains relatively stable and easy to drive through a stint and not just on fresh tyres.

Hotlap With This Setup

 

More Setup Info And Possible Tweaks

This setup is definitely trading off some single lap performance for better overall long run stability, so here are some tweaks you can make.

Wing levels – This is really tricky to nail round here. I’ll detail what I found in my testing:

• Medium downforce route – 26/28 – my preferred option for online races and developed career cars as it seemed to have about the same stability and lap times as the higher downforce approach (easy to control on the hard tyre), plus it is obviously stronger on the straights which comes in handy with 3 DRS zones.
• Higher downforce – 36/38 – Much better in the infield section, weaker on the straights but honestly on this track I didn’t notice a massive improvement in stability using the higher wings at least using online equal cars. The one exception to this is certain midfield or backmarker cars right at the start of career mode, where the higher wings can give better stablity and overall better lap times across a stint. Worth testing the lower vs higher wings in your first season of career mode to see what works better for you over long runs.

Wing spacing – As with the ’23 game, I’m finding I need the rear wing 2 clicks above the front for best stability and consistency in races, especially as the tyres start to go off and traction gets trickier. More aggressive wheel users are setting the rear wing many clicks lower than the front, but I find this unworkable on a pad. Experiment to see what works for you, but setups that feel OK in Time Trial can be a nightmare to control on worn tyres in a race.

Geometry – Most players are running all camber/toe to the left for all settings as it does give the maximum possible performance, but I’ve added just a few clicks of front and rear toe to add more rear stability. Move this fully back to the left if you want better potential pace at the cost of rear stability.

Tyre Pressures – Max rear pressures is a must round here to keep temps down, and for simplicity I just banged the left front up to max as well. But the front right tyre can struggle to get up to temperature if using the hard tyres, so for races where you use this tyre it’s advised to lower pressures down 1-1.5 PSI below maximum if preferred to get some more heat into them.

Intermediate Conditions – You’re not going to ever encounter this in career mode, but if someone’s created a wet online race at Bahrain just for fun, your dry setup will work OK as a base. Just raise the wings 1-2 clicks, and space the rear wing 3 clicks above the front if using a pad for better stability. Use minimum On Throttle Diff, raise Off Throttle Diff 5-10 clicks and you can very slightly soften the suspension and raise the ride height if desired.

Full Wet Conditions – For full wet races, you’ll need a few more adjustments for better traction and stability. Add a lot more wing so you’re using something like 33/36, raise your Off Throttle Diff 5-10 points again and raise ride height 3-5 clicks front and rear. Very rare you’ll ever do wet races here though.

Racing & Strategy Tips

Bahrain is usually pretty straightforward, but here’s a few extra tips for racing here.

Tyres – Bahrain is rear limited, meaning the rear tyres overheat and wear more quickly and traction gets trickier as the tyres wear (lower your On Throttle Diff to make this easier towards the end of stints, and be more patient and progressive on the throttle coming out of slower corners as the tyres wear).

Here are the wear rates I found in my testing:

• Softs – 8-9% per lap
• Mediums – 5.5% per lap
• Hards – 4% per lap.
• Rear left tyre wears the most, followed the front left and rear right. Front right wears the least.

Also max rear pressures is a must round here to keep temps down. Fronts you can drop 1-1.5 PSI below maximum if preferred to get some more heat into them.

ERS (Quali) – You’ve got a nice chunk of ERS overtake to use on Qualifying laps here to boost your top speed – something like 15 seconds worth in total. Look to deploy chunks of it on all the main straights, but the allowance does deplete after about 15 seconds of Overtake use, decreasing straight line speed, so look to use up your allowance just as you cross the finish line on a flying lap.

ERS Management (Race) – We’re back to ’23 vibes with this ’25 game, where the ERS is draining super quick and doesn’t easily recharge. Once your battery goes below 50% here, it’s very hard to recoup and you’ll find it just keeps dropping lower and lower with each lap even if you don’t use Overtake at all. Therefore use you battery super sparingly and switch to None on slow corners if you drop below 50% to more effectively recharge. And even if your battery level is higher, still be cautious and only use for several seconds per lap at the most.

Strategy – Degradation is also high round here, meaning you get a few good laps on fresh tyres and then pace falls off. For this reason, the undercut – where you pit  early and use the pace of fresh tyres to overtake cars in front – can be very effective. The white hard tyre also holds up very well so you’ve got flexibility on your pit lap – come in 1-2 laps earlier than planned if you’re stuck behind a bunch of fighting cars that you want to try and leap-frog. For 50% races, it’s almost certainly a 2 stop race using mediums and hards (MHH is my preferred). or even all three tyres if you can stretch out the softs. For 25% races, choose whatever tyre combo you want.