F1 Manager 2023 Setups Guide: How to get the perfect setup

Even if your driver is the next-generation Michael Schumacher, they won't go anywhere fast without the proper car setup. That's why you need our F1 Manager 2023 setups guide!

Just like with F1 23, every track requires its specialised setup. However, in F1 Manager 2023, you’re limited to the practice sessions to perfect the setup for your cars. You also have two cars to worry about instead of just one.

We’ve been experimenting in F1 Manager 2023, attempting to create the perfect setup for every track and driver. Here’s what we’ve discovered.

F1 Manager 2023 setups guide

As mentioned, you’re limited to the number of practice sessions per race weekend to perfect your setups. For a normal race weekend, that’s three practice sessions. However, F1 sprint races are new to the series this year, meaning in sprint weekends you only have a single practice session to nail the setup.

There’s also no meta to take advantage of like in F1 23, so you’re essentially working with a blank canvas for every track. Every setup has to be tailored to both the track and the driver.

So how do you know how to make the best setup each time?

Nailing the basics

Setups in F1 Manager 2023 are broken down into five categories: oversteer, braking stability, cornering, traction, and straights. The ideal range for each category is represented by a blue bar. These bars start off huge but narrow down every time your driver gains setup knowledge.

To adjust the balance of each bar, you have five sliders: front wing angle, rear wing angle, anti-roll distribution, tyre camber, and toe-out. Each slider affects the setup differently, some more than others, making the setup a mini-game puzzle you have to solve each time you tweak the car.

The table below shows which categories each slider affects:

Now we know what we’re tweaking and how to tweak them, where do we start?

All about confidence

The best way to find out if you have a good setup is through your driver, but they need to put the laps in first. The best way to get a headstart is to fuel the car up for around 20 laps, bolt on some hard tyres, and then send them straight out when the practice session starts.

At some circuits, you can make an educated guess about some aspects of the setup. Monaco needs as much wing as the car has, whereas high-speed circuits like Monza require almost no wing at all. Other circuits require a careful balance though, and that’s where the skill is needed.

Once your drivers have maxed out their feedback meter, you can call them into the pits and find out just how good the setup is. A full feedback meter turns blue and triggers a radio chat between the driver and the race engineer. The time taken to fill the feedback meter is mostly dictated by your drivers’ race engineers, so make sure you hire the best race engineers to speed things up.

Perfecting the tweak

Every time a driver is called back into the pits, their optimum range for each category will have narrowed. This helps gauge what needs tweaking to improve the setup, but this is also where the fun mini-game begins.

Changing one aspect of the car without another being affected is basically impossible. This means adjusting the anti-roll distribution to finetune the traction may need to be countered by a minor front-wing adjustment to bring the oversteer back into optimum range.

Finding the balance for each slider is key. The last thing you want to do is ruin the overall setup by trying to perfect the cornering. The best way to discover each slider's effect is to play around in FP1 and see how each slider adjusts each category.

Once you’ve used the feedback to adjust the car, it’s then a case of rinse and repeat until you have the best setup. The lowest value for a good setup is 75%, but even once you reach the magic number it’s still worth adding some minor tweaks. The higher the value, the better the performance of the car.

It’s also worth remembering that larger changes take longer to implement, so try and keep the changes smaller if you can.

Why it matters

Every race driver wants a car they can trust. This is no different in F1 Manager 2023.

New to F1 Manager 2023 is driver confidence. Confidence affects everything during a race, from your driver’s ability to pull off an overtake to their chances of crashing out of the race. Giving your driver a car with a good setup increases their confidence, therefore giving them a better chance in the race.

The last thing you want is a driver languishing at the back of the grid with no confidence, so it’s worth taking the time to work the car into the best racing machine. Sure, you could just let the AI manage F1 Manager 2023 setups for you, but once your driver is lapped for the third time in the race, you’ll regret it!