As a veteran, you might fall into the mistake of setting a high or very high difficulty level because you think you think you’re good enough to master it. Maybe you really are. The problem is that, at the highest levels, F1 22’s AI tends to cheat a bit, or at least that’s what our ego likes to think. But seriously, raise the difficulty level gradually based on your performance on the track, and you’ll skip all the frustration of a P20 qualification.

As with difficulty, F1 22 is not a matter of pride. Customize your experience until you find you’re having fun. There are dozens of aids that tweak virtually every aspect of gameplay. You can work your way up slowly, introducing concepts such as manually triggering ERS and DRS. Before you know it, you’ll be manually switching gears. 

In a Formula 1 GP, strategy is of utmost importance. Just before starting, take a look at the strategies so you know when to get back to the box. If you start a little back on the grid, an overcut could be a good opportunity to try and overtake at the pits, or maybe you might want to jump on medium tyres because you’ve noticed that they suit your car better. If you are in the front, you may want the hard ones to be consistent in the second race stint.

F1 22 introduces a simple QTE in the pit lane that determines how long it takes you to change tyres. Press A as late as possible, and that will save you a good second – that’s a huge amount of time in Formula 1, and something that might allow you to overtake or be overtaken in the pit lane by a driver who’s maybe chosen the same strategy as you.

In Formula 1, DRS is still a fundamental aspect that regulates your chances to overtake in most cases. In order to activate the adjustable rear wing, you’ll have to stay under a one-second gap from the car in front of you, so make sure you stay close to the opponent for as long as necessary before overtaking them. Likewise, don’t hesitate too much: despite the new rules, it’s still tough to do so for more than a few laps, especially at the highest levels of AI. Obviously, the opposite is still true: you’ll want to get out of that second gap from your pursuers, so that they don’t have too easy a life on the straights.

Coming from Grid Legends, F1 22’s supercars might have easily offered an arcade driving experience, but this is not the case. Pirelli Hot Lap challenges and time trials with these racing cars are extremely life-like, and you’ll need to calculate the braking times if you don’t want to get disqualified for going off-track. Likewise, especially with average speed challenges, it’s important to stay on the right trajectory and get out of corners the right way.

Free practice is so different when you think of it in the real sport and then in the video game. In Formula 1, free practices are a time reserved for teams to test set-ups and familiarize themselves with the tracks, while in the game you’d expect all the action on Sunday. Maybe thanks to Codemasters’ rally legacy, free practice is probably the mode you’ll play the most here. It’s pure fun, which might take you off-guard at first, but it’s a good opportunity to learn the tracks properly before engaging in a race and for practice programmes – specific on-track tests you embark on during your career so you can acquire development points.

Steering more than necessary will cause you to degrade your tires prematurely. The good news is that F1 22 warns you with a rumble, whether you play on your controller or your steering wheel, when this happens. Most of the time you’ll not be able to avoid it, because you will simply have to steer in that direction, but this feedback is useful when you could reduce the range of your direction change, and save some tyre life before the pit stop.

The curbs are much less slippery than in the past, but they still remain a threat. Some have stayed exactly the way they were in F1 2021, so you’ll just want to avoid them. Others, in general, will contribute to the degradation of your tires and, should they be too high, they could even ruin the underbody of your car. So, the more you resist the temptation to lean on them, the better.

Now that you are ready to hit the track, it’s time to remember your F1 etiquette: behave, don’t lean against your opponents, and don’t cut corners. It doesn’t matter you’re doing that with the AI, because that’s where you’ll acquire your modus operandi in the race that you’ll replicate with real-life players in multiplayer, where it really matters. In addition, calculating the right place to overtake cleanly is what really makes the driving experience rewarding.

Written by Paolo Sirio on behalf of GLHF