Welocme to thiscomplete full guide on the latest installment in the Formula 1 series by Codemasters.

Just a quick note is that this guide will be in development for quite a while as I experiment with all sorts of setups on the cars and lines through corners, as well as adjusting to and learning the new circuits and the new car physics. So I'm sorry if what your looking for isn't here yet but just leave me a comment and I will get to it as soon as I can.

The guide when complete should contain sections on:
- General Tips
- Driving Style
- Tyre Saving
- Fuel Saving
- Temperature Management
- AI Changes
- Track Guides
- Car Setup Tips

Hopefully this will be complete soon and will be able to help each and every one of you find those few seconds between winning and losing.

*Apologies for any spelling mistakes in advance as I typed this all out very quickly, please just leave me a comment and I will fix it, thanks*

This is a new game. Quite a few people have been saying this is just a 2013 reskin but it is actually so much more, and as such you cannot just drive as you did in F1 2013. The experience of driving previous games will certainly help but this game does require some driving style adjustments.

So to begin with you should start with what experience you have. Have you been using assists before? Have you driven all these tracks before? Just take what you know and build on it. Whether your a veteran or a newbie though, its best to start slowly and build upon it, getting faster and faster as you go. This way you are getting faster and not slowing down, which will feel like you are actually making improvement and you will feel like you can still improve so you will keep striving for faster laptimes.

As you get better at the game you should start removing any assists you have on. It may feel like you are just making it hard for yourself but you can actually drive a fair bit faster without the assists than with them as long as you can get the technique right.

Finally, don't ever give up. You may think that you are really slow, but everyone can improve on what skills they have (and you might just be against a group of MLG players). You are only as good as you make yourself, so keep working on your pace and you will get faster with the practice.

Your driving style will depend on what assists you are using. Most of you readin this I can imagine will be driving without assists, but just in case there are some who do use them, I'll split it into two sections.

For those who do have assists you can be far more aggressive on the controls. This won't mean you are faster necessarily but the game will stop all the bad things from happening meaning you will find it much easier to push very hard on the car at first, but you will soon find that its much harder to improve on your time with assists turned on. If you switch the assists off the you will have to adjust your driving style, meaning you will be slower at first, but in time you will find yourself improving on your times you set when you ha assists enabled.

For those driving with assists, you will need to be far more careful and precise with your controls. The car will react far more intensly to your inputs, but won't necessarily deal with all of them in a positive way. So you need to be smooth with your inputs on the controls, try not to steer to sharply or you will have more chance of spiining and will get far more wheelspin and lose time if you are to sharp on the throttle. Being smooth with the controls not only will give your car the best chance of gripping the tarmac and going faster, but will also give you some extra benefits when compared to driving like an ignorant fool with a brick on their foot. Drivers using no assists will find it easier to improve as they will quite quickly pick up this new driving stylke, or adjust their currecnt driving style in a way that more suits this game, meaning they will quite quickly finding themselevs improving on their laptimes by significant amounts.

There is no huge difference between driving with or without assists in terms of laptime (about a second or two in favour of no assists), but a huge difference in terms of driving style, so its important to practice and find a setup where you feel comfortable and can get the most out of the car.

*This section applys mainly to those driving without ABS and traction control, as driving with these assists means your tyres will wear out at a generally steady rate*

The main 3 situations in which you can seriously affect your tyre wear for better or for worse, are launching from the grid, braking, and accelerating out of corners.

When launching off the grid if you just hold down the throttle like you could in the older games, you will get a lot of wheelspin, overheat your rear tyres badly, and lose a few positions to cars behind who got beter starts than you. The best way to launch off the grid is to apply 50% throttle at the 3rd light, and then wait for the lights to go out. As the lights go out your car will go forward with an intial bit of wheelspin, which you will feel through a small rumbling through your controller or wheel. This wheelspin won't last for very long at all ad won't heat your tyres up really at all, and since it doesn't last very long the car will soon get traction, at which point you will stop feeling the rubling sensation and you can apply full throttle. This start technique has got me from where ever I am on the grid to 1st place out of the first corner in every single online race I have done so far. I may not have kept 1st place all race but the launch is all we are intrested in here.

The next situation of braking is not such a hard situation in which you can manage your tyres, but if it goes wrong you may find your gaining a significant amount of wear on your tyres quite quickly. When going into brake for a corner you should initially apply full brakes as you would with ABD turned on, but when you get to the lower gears your wheels have and increased chance of locking. So as you get to the lower gears, generally 3rd and 2nd gear, you should lift off the brakes slightly to stop them from locking, but still slowing you enough to take the corner normally.

The third and final situation of accelerating out of a corner is where is can go most wrong. In the lower gears especially, wheelspin is increasingly common and can literally tear apart you tryes and your race. Therefore when accelerating you whould only apply a small amount of throttle to begin with, maybe 30% before rapidly increasing pressure on the throttle as you feel the car grip on the road. This should eliminate most of the wheelspin, but only you can guarentee it will completely disappear, just try to not be so aggressive and you should be fine. Also when using manual gears, just never go into first gear, not matter what you do because you wheels will spin even if your just applying 10% throttle pretty much.

Just try to be careful when learning to drive without assists or adjusting form another game and you should be fine once you get the hang of it.

The main way of saving fuel is the same one in all the previous F1 games. This is turning the engine down to fuel mix 1 (lean), meaning your engine is taking in less fuel at once. This does compromise pace a bit as your engine won't have the same amount of power as before but will steadily build up a reserve of fuel which can be quite useful if you ever need to make up for a lack of fuel or to give you some extra should you need to push harder towards the end of the race.

The new methods of fuel saving however can also be used to save some fuel throughout the race. A realistic addition to the game is the ability to save fuel by lifting and coasting which is how drivers mainly save fuel in real F1 races. What this means is lifting off the throttle early before getting on the brakes at the normal braking point, meaning less fuel is required to be sent to the engine. This does also compromise laptimes and pace as you will lose a small amount of speed during that time before you get on the brakes. Coasting is when on a straight you lift off the throttle either slightly or completely, meaning you won't gain as much speed but once again less fuel is required to be sent ot the engine, meaning more in reserve.

The more excess fuel you have, the longer you can spend in fuel mix 3 (rich) which improves the performance of the car, and will improve your laptimes allowing you to catch up to another car, or build on you gap to the car behind you.

In this game, engine temperature and tyre temperature are far harder to keep at the optimal level compared to previous F1 games, thanks to work on the realism of the game by Codemasters.

The tyres and engine can overheat very easily at the start if you apply too much throttle at the start of the race or coming out of a corner. Thanks to the major increase in torque on the cars this year the wheelspin can be dramatic if you can't control it, meaning you can get very hot tyres very easily. This is baad becasue it means that they will wear faster in general as well as being torn apart by the wheelspin itself.

In addition to this, the cars understeer more than in the previous F1 games. This means that you may find yourself having trouble keeping the tyres on you rcar at the optimum temperature as they like to get cold when your not pushing them hard or getting some wheelspin. To keep them warm you should just push them as ahrd as possible by taking every single corner as fast as possible and when on straights, if you have a gap between you and the car behind, weave a bit from left to right or vice versa to make the tires keep working so they retain some heat.

For those hoping to just jump in and play as you did on F1 2013, you may be in for a bit of suprise when confronted with the newly written AI players.

The AI in F1 2014 are more intelligent, aggressive and a fair bit faster in every difficulty. The weaker AI opponents aren't changed much, but as you get onto the higher difficulties like Expert and Legendary, they start to produce far more realistic, aggressive manouvres, and try tactics like the undercut (pitting early to gain a speed advantage for a few laps so they are infront after you pit) and divebombing up the inside of you into slow corners. This can make them quite challenging to deal with on the higher difficulties for people who weren't the best at the previous games.

Therefore I would recommend doing a few races in Grand Prix mode before starting Carrer mode so that you know for sure what difficulty you should have it on, beause you may find yourself struggling a bit in this game.

First I think its best I explain what each of the different slider in the setup section does, and then you can start making setups of your own, but general tips from experience will be thrown in for your benefit. Lets bring those laptimes down!

First thing to consider is how long the race is going to be, 25%?, 50%?, 100%? However long its going to last really should affect how aggressively you setup the car. If you setup the car to go really fast then it will burn away its tyres faster so you will need to pit more, so do bear it in mind before starting your setup...

In the Aerodynamics section you will find two slider, one for the fron wing and one for the rear wing. If you slide the front wing slider to the right, you will gain cornering speed and front end grip, but it also means that the rear end might be more unstable through the corners which could result in sliding and faster wearing of the rear tyres. If you move the front wing slider to the left you will lose front end grip and have slower cornering speeds, but will gain more rear end stability meaning less sliding, and potentially less tyre wear. If you move the rear wing slider to the right then your car will have more understeer, increased drag resulting in a lower top speed, however you will be faster in fast corners. If you move the rear wing slider to the left your car will have more oversteer, less drag meaning a higher top speed, but will take fast corners slower. It is best to keep the two sliders within a space of each other to keep the car stable through and coming out of the corners. Its better to have them further to the left in dry weather as you don't need as much grip, and a bit further to the right in wet weather as this will give more grip on the slippery surface.

Its generally best to leave the braking section alone in my experience unless you really know what your doing because it can completely mess up what your doing. Leaving the balance slider in the middle gives the best result under breaking but may cause uneven tyre wear on certain tracks, in which case its best to change it in the quick menu in the race. If you increase the pressure option you will slow down faster but are far more likely to lock up, so I'd leave this one in the middle or on medium. The bigger the size of the brakes, the faster your car will slow down but you will have extra weight onboard, so you may find acceleration and braking are compromised slightly. Again, I'd just leave it in the middle. Simples.

The balance section is also split into the front and rear sliders. If you move the front to the right you will generate turn in and a more responsive turning car, but you will lose grip in the actual corner, and the opposite will happen if you move the slider to the left. Its best left a bit to the right in dry weather as you won't need as much grip on the dry surface meaning you can be faster with the extra twitchy front end, and as you may have guessed its better to the left in wet weather when you'll need the extra grip on the slippery surface. If you move the rear slider to the right you'll get more oversteer and less understeer, but will decrease rear stability meaning you may destroy your rear tyres quite quickly. If you move the rear slider to the left your car will understeer more, saving the tyres and stabalising the rear end, but compromising overall speed. The rear roll bar is best left one space to the right of where you put the front roll bar for the best results, meaning you may want to move the front roll bar down a few spots depending on where you originally set it.

The suspension settings are quite easy to get right. The further left you move the front ride height slider, the more downforce the car will have, and as long as you put the rear ride height slider at the same value, your steering won't be affected really. The only thing to be weary is that if you get the middle of the car over a kerb then the further these two sliders are to the left, the more likely you are to spin. The rear and front spring stiffness should also be kept as a pair, on the same values. However the further to the left you move these the less responsive the car will be when turning in, and the car will have less traction. However cornering grip is increased so it may help in wet conditions. If you move these sliders to the right however you will feel better traction and more responsive handling so put them further up this end in the dry when less grip is needed. Bear in mind the further to the right the spring stiffnes is the faster your tyres wear away so be careful to find an equilibrium.

Again in the alignment section the four sliders should be split into pairs of sliders, as the two cambers should be kept the same, as should the toe for each end. Decreasing the cambers will increase handling, but lowers traction, straight line acceleration and compromises the lifespan of the tyres. An increase toe setting increases the responsiveness when turning into a corner, but makes the car less stable on straights. This isn't actually a proplem at all so I always put the toe at maximum.

And there you have it, a complete guide on how to setup a F1 car in F1 2014. You may want to experiment with different setups as different setups will work on different circuits, so don't ust save one setup for wet & dry and expect to be fast all the time.

*Bear in mind I was using no assists other than the racing line and auto gears to do this, mainly because my wheel isn't set up at the moment so I was using a controller which I find harder.*

I have stumbled upon a setup that has reduced my setups on every track I have used it on so far by up to a second. Yea, a full second.

So on Sunday early afternoon here in UK, I spent an hour in a time trials session on the Sochi track (Russian GP) in a Mercedes, trying to set the best laptime I could. I was mucking around with some setups incase I found one that magically would improve on my current fastest laptime which was at the time: 1:41.127.

I came back to trying setups this evening with the same car (Mercedes) and on the same track. I had some good wing angles on the car and decided I would throw around some of the other settings to see what happened to the car, and hoped it would actually be drivable. The result was unexpectedly a ginormous improvement. To be precise, my new fastest laptime (set on my third lap with this setup) is now: 1:40.078.

I then ran around some of the other tracks to see if it worked on them too, and lo and behold it did. The improvements ranged from a 0.249 seond improvement, to the improvement at Sochi which was 1.049 second improvement. I haven't tried it at all tracks but this seems to be a great setup for improveing on laptimes, so here it is for you to use and I can only hope it will make you faster as it has made me so:

Aero:
- Front Wing = 4
- Rear Wing = 7

Braking:
- Balance = 50:50
- Pressure = Medium
- Brake Size = Standard

Balance:
- Front Roll Bar = 4
- Rear Roll Bar = 8

Suspension:
- Front Ride Height = 1
- Rear Ride Height = 1
- Front Spring Stiffness = 11
- Rear Spring Stiffness = 11

Alignment:
- Camber Front = 3.50
- Camber Rear = 1.50
- Toe Front = 0.15
- Toe Rear = 0.50

And that is that, I hope this gives you a boost but I must warn you the car might be slightly more sensetive to locking up and wheelspin so remember to drive smoothly when using this setup.

Have fun.