Bahrain is one of just two night races in the F1 2020 calendar.
It is also one of the most power-dependent tracks on the game, thanks to its extended straights.
Unfortunately, finding a good balance between single lap pace and consistent race pace can be difficult.
This guide should help you find the perfect mix, and leave you top of the podium every time!
Aerodynamics
The complex middle sector in Bahrain makes aerodynamic settings essential for setting competitive lap times.
You need mixture of increased downforce to deal with the tight sector and low angles to cope with the long straights.
For this, we recommend a value of 6 on front and rear.
If anything, you can turn them lower, but we found these to be a sweet spot.
Transmission
Grip is important around Sakhir, so we recommend a more locked differential to help your traction.
This may cost some tyre life, but grip is what is going to have you setting race winning lap times.
We prefer 90% on-throttle differential and 75% off-throttle, which leads to a good mix of stability tyre preservation.
Suspension Geometry
Thanks to your nicely modified transmission setup, tyre wear should be fine.
You can’t be too adventurous however, and should stick to the rule of higher camber and lower toe making you faster (as more of the tyre is touching the surface of the track).
This left us with -2.7 front and -1.2 rear camber and toe set at 0.07 at the front and 0.26 on the rear.
Suspension
We recommend a stiffer spring setup at the front coupled with a softer rear.
7 on the front and 2 on the rear is where we settled, with the anti-roll bar set as 10 front and 6 rear.
Finally, for ride height we went with 3 both front and rear. This helps acceleration out of the tighter corners and keeps the car stable.
Brakes
Thanks to the fast sections leading into turns 1, 4 and 14, brake failures are common.
For fear of locking up into turns 9 and 10, we set a brake pressure of 75% and a front brake bias of 52%.
Tyres
With individual tyre pressure settings in F1 2020, we set the front left at 23 psi and the front right at 23.4 psi.
Rear tyres often need to be lower, so we opted for a value of 21.5 psi on the rear right and 21.1 psi on the rear left.