Having played all the recent F1 games, I can say that the difficulty of the handling in full wet (heavy rain) conditions has taken a step up on F1 24. In intermediate light rain conditions, it’s not so bad. But in full wet conditions, it’s much harder to control the car this year.

Exiting corners, the car doesn’t really properly stabilise until you reach fifth gear, and before that, the traction can be quite a handful. So I thought I’d knock together a quick guide for controller users on how to race in full wet conditions.

Basically, it boils down to being super careful and progressive with your controller inputs, and adjusting your car setup to tone down the level of rotation for easier traction on corner exits. But let’s cover some specific tips in more detail.

1. Be Super Cautious On The Throttle

The first thing that stands out in full wet conditions is that the traction can be really tricky on pad if using Medium or No Traction Control. The rear end of the car is constantly trying to step out on you if you feed in too much power on corner exits, so you have to be super careful in applying the throttle out of slow and medium speed corners.

It’s something you have experiment with on each corner at each track until you find a sweet spot, but in general, you

• Firstly, wait a fraction longer before beginning to apply the throttle out of certain corners than you would in the dry.
• Also be smoother, more gradual and more progressive on the throttle.
• Some more twisty and technical sections are better done when you just take them entirely on partial throttle in the wet (like when you hold the throttle partly on for race starts). Only go on full throttle on dead straight sections of track.

Driving in full wet conditions definitely needs a lot more concentration and finesse than in the dry on this game. It’s like having to be more precise with all your inputs (especially the power) and threading the car through slower speed traction zones, minimising wheelspin and drifting to get the best lap times.

The smoother you can be on corners exits, the faster your lap times will be in the wet.

2. Key Setup Tweaks (Wings & Off Throttle Diff)

In full wet conditions, over-rotation is your enemy on this game, especially when using a pad. It makes the back end step out and your corner exits will be less smooth as you can’t get on the traction properly.

Here’s two key setup changes you can make to dampen the car’s rotation and allow for easier traction out of corners in the wet:

Wing spacing – In ALL wet conditions (intermediate as well as full wet), I’d always set the rear wing 3 clicks above the front when using a controller. In the dry, I often use a 2 click spacing, but adding the extra click makes the car more stable and easier to control. The front wing is adjustable even in parc ferme, so you can create the necessary wing spacing before sessions begin from the setup menu, and for dry to wet races, you can also adjust your front wing settings at pit stops using your MFD to add or take off front wing.

Off Throttle Differential – Controls how much the car rotates into corners when coasting off the throttle. In the dry, I’m often using 45 or 50, but for full wet conditions, I always bump this up to 55 or even 60 to prevent over-rotation and again make it easier to get on the power coming out of corners.

55 or 60 is a good Off Throttle Diff value to run in the wet

3. Adjust ERS Mix In Corners

Another neat little trick I’ve found helps in full wet conditions at least (in intermediate conditions, it doesn’t seem to make much difference). Use the None ERS setting in corners again to make the traction easier.

It’s something each player should experiment with, but I’ve found I set faster qualifying laps especially in full wet conditions by setting the ERS to None for slow corners and back up to Medium/Overtake on the straights, rather than using Medium/Overtake as in the dry. Same for races as well. It makes the traction easier and causes you to lose less time with the back end constantly stepping out as you’ll often get trying to exit corners with Medium ERS mode.

It basically means on some tracks, you’re alternating only between Overtake and None ERS mode on Qualifying laps (sometimes, you’ve to be more nuanced and use Medium sometimes as well).

But basically, try switching to None in traction zones rather than leaving it as Medium, and see if you can set better lap times due to the improved traction (it worked for me).

4. Brake Earlier To Reduce Cornering Speed

This is another aspect of the full wet handling that seems to have been tightened up in F1 24. When you first try driving in heavy rain, you might notice the car doing this weird sideways skidding in certain corners.

That’s because you’ve carried too much speed into that corner, and it’s causing the car to aquaplane. The simple fix to this is to just brake earlier rather than later when entering corners in full wet conditions.

Therefore, whatever braking points you’ve got used to for certain corners in dry conditions, just pull them back a bit for full wet conditions, and reduce the speed you carry into corners. When you do this, you’ll see the car maintain stability better during corner entry and mid corner, and you’ll know you’ve got the apex speed right. Whenever you see the car skidding in that weird way, you know you’ve carried too much into that corner for the conditions, and try braking gentler but also earlier on the next lap.

In the wet, it’s more about feeding the threading the car through technical cornering section with a more precise and gradual input, and getting smooth traction on the exit. That’s what seems to deliver the lap times rather than trying to push too hard and “force” the pace. In other words, the typical racer’s adage of “slow in, fast out” for cornering does seem to work better in wet conditions.