F1 22 is here at last! The official game of the 2022 Formula 1 season has been launched and we're big fans. The full '22 season is included, including all of the practice sessions we see in real life.
How do you simulate these practice sessions though? We've got everything you need to know right here!
What are practice sessions?
Depending on the weekend structure you have set, you may not even have practice sessions enabled. You do have the option to turn them off, but we recommend you have them enabled, even if you don't take part in them.
You can opt to have 30 or 60-minute practice sessions. The latter is a full practice session that mirrors what we see in real-life. 30-minute "short" practice session are shorter, but still give you enough time to carry out practice programmes.
There are three practice sessions, with FP2 being run at roughly the same time of day as qualifying and the race.
How to simulate
The ultimate goal of practice is to learn the circuit ahead of qualifying and the race later in the weekend. We do this in the F1 game by running practice programmes.
These include everything from Track Acclimitisation to full on qualifying simulation laps. The practice sessions also give you resource points to develop your car in My Team Career Mode.
However, time is precious and if you don't want to take part in the sessions yourself, you do have the option to do "quick practice". Quick practice allows you to set which practice programmes your driver carries out, but has the game simulate them.
Now, we don't recommend this for an optimum experience in F1 22. The reason for this is because you don't get to learn the track before qualifying. This is a particularly important part of the weekend, especially for newer tracks like Miami.
Also, you have little control on whether you get the resource points available from the weekend. This could easily make the difference between unlocking a new upgrade or not in the R&D system.
Although, if you don't have enough time to do practice, qualifying and the race, practice has to be the one which gets the chop.