The Corniche Circuit in Jeddah is already more fun to drive on the ’25 game than it was on ’24, with much of the horrible twitchiness of last year’s handling dialed out of the new game. Which thankfully makes this circuit easier to handle on a pad with all the walls close by.

 

That said, any pad setup I post here will be designed for stability and consistency rather than blinding speed, as you’ve got some tricky high speed sections here that can be hard to navigate lap after lap with the walls so close by.

Here’s my baseline Jeddah pad setup for dry races, with a focus on stability:

• Wings – 8/10 or 18/20
• Diff – 10/50
• Camber – -3.50/-2.00/0.03/0.13
• Suspension –  41-3-14-10-23-50
• Brakes – 100% Pressure/55% Bias
• Tyre pressures – Max pressures all tyres

This setup gives the car a more sluggish and planted feel that’s not as outright fast as a more aggressive setup, but is much easier to drive consistently round here lap after lap without damaging your wing, which is half the battle here especially in longer 50% races.

Hotlap With This Setup

 

More Setup Info

Here’s some reasons for the setups being how it is, plus some options for making it more aggressive if you want to.

Wing Levels

We’re having to go way lower on wings than even the last two games to compete on the straights. 7/9 is how low I had to go to start matching the deltas on the straights in my career practice programmes. Even using these wings, I was still getting blown past on the straights and with the slow recharging ERS, you sometimes might just have to give positions up and follow behind the AI to recoup your own battery. The rear wing higher than the front gives better stability, but you can invert them to something like 9/7 if you’re confident on the handling and want sharper turn in.

(update – after some more testing, I have also found that higher wing levels can work out well overall in races, so you can also try something like 18/20 wings as well. It’ll make you slower on the straights, but faster in sector 1 and coming out the high speed chicanes. Higher wing levels also make it easier to follow cars and not be affected by dirty air, so you can go different routes with the downforce depending on whether you want speed on the straights or a bit more stability)

Camber/Toe Settings (Geometry)

This is a crucial setting where I’ve deviated from the norm for this track on this game. Almost all setups this year are using LLLL for the camber/toe as the best for outright performance, and it usually is. But for this track I’ve moved the front and rear toe in 3 clicks, the reason for this being it provides more stability and consistency by giving the rear end a more planted and stable feel (but it will possibly make tyre wear and temps a little bit worse on the rear).

It makes the turn in a little more sluggish but in a way that helps especially with the high speed but very tricky turns 16 and 22, where you have to throw the car in at high speed but the walls are close by and if you turn in too early, you clip the wall and your wing is damaged. Adding some extra toe just makes it easier to take these two corners lap after lap, but if you’re more confident in your ability to navigate them through a race, move the geometry back to LLLL (or use something like LLL/0.13 where just the rear toe is moved in) if you want outright performance.

Roll Bars

Again, I’ve tweaked these settings for more stability. More aggressive setups often use something like 10/19 or 10/21 for the Anti roll bars, but I’ve inverted them to 14/10 for a more planted feel that’s easier to control. Flip them back round if you’re confident round here for more potential outright cornering performance.

Intermediate Conditions

Won’t ever get this in career mode, but if someone decides to have some mischief in an online lobby, just use your current wings or add 1-2 clicks if desired, but space your rear wing 3 clicks above the front for better stability. Raise your Off Throttle Diff 5 clicks for reduced rotation, and use minimum On Throttle Diff if you’re not already.

Full Wet Conditions

Probably won’t ever happen for most players here, but make some more drastic adjustments by adding 6-8 clicks of wing and spacing them three clicks apart again. Raise your Off Throttle Diff more drastically 10 points from your dry setting and also raise your ride height 3-5 clicks. You can also slightly soften the suspension and roll bars if you want.

Racing and Strategy Tips For Jeddah

Jeddah can be a tricky circuit to race at with lots to focus on with the layout, and also aggressive and fast charging AI that like to go for overtakes on this game with all the DRS zones. Here’s some tips for navigating races here.

First Lap – It’s a narrow track for the first few corners and cars can bunch up on the first lap. Much like Baku, it’s one of those tracks where it’s best to just get through the first lap rather than streaming in trying to make up a load of places. The damage physics seems to be a bit more forgiving on this year’s game, at least on Standard damage setting. But wing damage on lap 1 here really ruins your race, as the combination of losing time changing your front wing and also dropping out the DRS train tends to put you right to the back and it’s very hard to recover after that.

Sector 1 – The “esses” in this sector are tricky but satisfying to get right. On a pad, you need to thread the car through using partial throttle whilst avoiding the raised kerbs (will spit the car off the track). Go on full throttle only once the car is pointing straight. Won’t be your strongest sector using my setup (invert the wings to be stronger here), but avoid the kerbs and you’ll be fine.

Tyre/Pit Strategy – The soft tyres wear super fast here and only holds up for a few laps at the most. Here are the approx wear rates I found in standard night time (race time) conditions (wear rates can be higher during the earlier daylight practice sessions when track temperatures are higher):

• Soft – 10-11% per lap (up to 13% per lap for some stock career cars).
• Medium – 5.5% per lap (up to 6.5% per lap for some stock career cars).
• Hard – 4.25% per lap (up to 5% per lap for some stock career cars)
• Front right tyre wears the most.

For 25% races you can do whatever you want, but for 50% races it will be a 2 stop race if you start on the softs. You can try starting on the mediums or hards and do a 1 stop, but it’ll be tricky towards the end of stints (once wear on any tyre gets above 45-50%, traction starts getting really tricky out of corners and you need to be a lot more patient and progressive on throttle application on corner exits). I managed a MH one stop in a season 1 Williams in career mode but am skeptical that it was even faster than doing a 2 stop because I was losing a lot of pace at the end of each stint, particularly on traction out of corners.

ERS Use And Defending (Race) – Strategic ERS use and conservation is a must here with 3 long DRS zones and much slower recharging ERS on the ’25 game. In normal lap to lap driving, just a short burst of Overtake mode around 1 or 2 straights keeps you more or less level. Any more than that and your meter will keep dropping lap after lap, and it seems to get harder to recoup once it drops below 50%. Sometimes it might not be possible to defend position here and it’s better to drop behind another car and stay in their DRS to give you chance to replenish your own ERS. If you do want to defend, the AI seem to go for it most on the last DRS zone before the pit straight, and the pit straight itself, so save your battery for there.