The Circuit de Gilles Villeneuve in Montreal is a popular one with fans, providing good racing opportunities with 3 DRS zones.

 

What downforce level to use had been a tricky one here the last few games; you can go higher but you’ll be a sitting duck on the straights. The general compromise on F1 25 seems to be a low-medium downforce setup, which prioritizes straight line speed over cornering for overall competitiveness.

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

• Wings – 25/27 or 38/40
• Diff – 10/55
• Camber – -3.50/-2.00/0.03/0.13
• Suspension –  41-3-4-8-22-49
• Brakes – 100% Pressure/55 Bias
• Tyre pressures – Middle fronts, Max rears

This setup will feel like it’s a little conservative and leaving a lot on the table when on fresh tyres, but it is designed to be easier to drive with a more stable rear end on worn tyres, to make stints easier overall not just when the tyres are new.

It’s more cautious turn in will also help you avoid something that can be a real race killer round here – corner cutting penalties, especially at the final chicane. The wings level are also strange – more on that below.

More Setup Analysis

Wing Levels – This is actually one of the hardest tracks for me right to nail down what’s optimal. Here’s what I’ve found so far (but still undecided)

• OFFLINE– If you’re going against the AI offline in career, you might want a wing level low enough that you’re comfortably beating the delta on the straights in your practice programmes. And that seems to be super low this year at around 15, with me using 14/16 first time round, though you might want to play around a few clicks either side of this as well as per your own preference. With 3 DRS zones, you need that straight line speed. Or you can try something like 25/27 if you’re good at getting launch off the corners.
• ONLINE – Racing online or if you’ve got very strong speed to pull away from chasing cars, you can go higher with the wings like 25/27. But I just tried this and even this wing level was still difficult to control on worn tyres, with a big pace drop off, so you might want to go even higher and try something like 38/40 if you want to maintain good cornering across an entire stint. Although that’s a very weird setting for Canada, it’s what I’ll be trying as the dirty air and worn tyres physics on this game is very extreme.
• Bottom Line – Unless you’re amazing at controlling the traction on worn tyres, it’s probably going to be medium (25/27) or high (38/40) wing levels round here. But I’ll keep experimenting and update as needed. Right now, I’m leaning towards 38/40 as both the low and even medium wing settings weren’t very easy to control here across stints on any tyre.
• Update – After trying 38/40 online, I’d have to say that’s what I’m going for right now despite it being a very unusual wing level at Canada. Simply because even using 25/27 wings, the traction was still horrible on worn tyres here and I was losing too much lap time towards the end of stints. With 38/40, I got much more stability and 15 easy laps on the hard tyres before the handling became tricky.

IMP Video – You need higher downforce for races when the tyres go off (definitely applies to Canada)

 

Geometry – You can make a few adjustments that are stability focused, as traction can start to get tricky even when the tyres are just a few laps old. I’ve moved the front and rear toe in 3 clicks, which can help to give the car a more stable or planted feel with easier traction, especially on worn tyres, but can also cost you some outright performance and tyre wear. Move the camber back to LLLL if you want to go for pure performance at the cost of less stability.

Roll Bars (IMP Tweak) – Even using my standard 14/10 planted roll bar setup wasn’t enough at this track, so I had to go even lower to 4/8 roll bar settings to give a planted enough feel for comfortable handling and traction across stints. This keeps the car nicely stuck to the track and also reduces tyre wear quite a lot, but can feel a bit sluggish. If you want something more aggressive, try 12/16 or 12-21 roll bars, but it will be trickier to control on worn tyres.

Tyre Pressures – Fronts are less of an issue round here, so can run them around the middle. Rears are an issue with all the traction zones, and can overheat if you’re too aggressive on the throttle. Max pressures (plus patient and modulated throttle input out of corners) needed on the rears to keep temps down.

Intermediate Conditions – For light rain conditions, the dry setup will work OK as it is, but I’d always adjust the wings so the rear wing is always 3 or even 4 clicks above the front wing (something like 15/19 or 16/20), and lower the on throttle Diff to 10 if it’s not already there. Also I’d raise the Off Throttle Diff 5 points or perhaps even 10 points to 60 to dial out over-rotation and make the already tricky traction a bit easier.

Full Wet Conditions – For heavy rain full wet conditions, this is going to be tricky. I’d space the wings 4 or even 5 clicks apart and raise both wing levels 5-10 clicks (something like 22/27). Also raise you Off Throttle Diff to 60 or even 65, and raise the ride height 4-5 clicks as well. Traction will be hard for sure in full wet, so I’d recommend keep going moving the settings in the direction I suggested until the rotation is dialed back to the point where you can get back on the throttle smoothly out of slow corners without wheelspin or the back end stepping out.

Racing & Strategy Tips

Here’s a few extra tips for racing round Montreal.

ERS Overtake (Qualifying) – Got loads of extra Overtake mode to use round here – it’s actually hard to get the “Deployment Used” sign to come up on flying laps here. Spam your Overtake mode on all the medium and long straights for better quali times. Just aim to drain your yellow ERS meter to zero or close to it as you finish the lap.

Traction/Rear Tyres – Lap time in Canada when using a pad seems to come down to getting smooth traction and exits out of the corners, without wheelspin or the back end stepping out. Set your wings for optimal turn in (not too much and not too little). Keep your on throttle diff low and be smooth and progressive on the input to get out of corners smoothly. It’s a rear limited track so the traction handling does get tricky here as the tyres start to wear, even with more stable setups and even on the medium and hard tyres. You just have to be slightly more progressive and patient on the power as the rear tyres start to go towards the end of stints.

Wear/Strategy – Wear is actually on the low to moderate side here on F1 25 compared to other tracks. Here’s what I found from my testing:

• Soft – 6% per lap
• Medium – 3.5% per lap
• Hard – 3% per lap
• Rear left wears the quickest, followed closely by the rear right (rear limited circuit)

The very small wear difference between the medium and hard creates interesting strategy options, and the soft can also come into play for a 4-6 lap stint for 25% races if you’re smooth on traction. 50% races are at least a 2 stop using the medium and hard tyres (unless you’re amazing on tyre wear), with the medium tyre feeling like the best race tyre by far. The relatively short pit stop time loss means that 50% races have a number of viable strategies, including 2 and even 3 stop races.

Defending (Race) – With 3 DRS zones round here, defending position can be super tricky with how powerful the ERS/DRS combo is, plus how slow the ERS is to recharge. The AI will basically go for overtakes along all 3 of the DRS zones, so you’ll have to use very short bursts coming out of each corner as needed to prevent a car getting alongside, but no more than you need to hold position. And it’s good to deploy a several second chunk of Overtake coming out of the sharp hairpin onto the long straight.

update – using 14/16 wings in offline career mode and strategic ERS usage just using what I needed out of turns 6/7 , 10 and 12/13, I just about managed to hold off the AI to hold onto 9th place in my first race here, but with a big “Trulli Train” behind me. I also tried 25/27 wings in an online race, and it was OK but only OK, with handling still tricky on all tyres towards the end of stints. Next time, I’ll be trying 38/40 wings and again testing stability over an entire race.