The yearly dash around the winding streets of Monte Carlo is an absolute classic. Sadly, the 2020 race has been cancelled, but luckily you can recreate it in Codemasters’ F1 2020!
Despite its status as the jewel in the Formula 1 crown, however, many players hate driving the circuit. With this setup, even the most avid Monaco hater will find the track at least a little easier than they once thought.
Aerodynamics
It will come as no surprise that you’ll want plenty of downforce around the city streets of Monte Carlo.
I recommend running 7-11 wings. This gives you plenty of overall downforce, and the large difference between the front and rear wings gives you extra stability in the low speed traction zones, of which there are plenty in Monaco.
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If you’re having trouble with understeer, raising the front wing setting by a point or two should do the trick.
Transmission
As with almost every situation in F1 2020, 50% for your on-throttle differential setting is the way to go. This will help with stability as well as rear tyre wear.
For the off-throttle setting, 65% is what I’ve gone with. Having such a low percentage does hinder stability slightly, but it will give you a very welcome helping hand when it comes to rotating the car around Lowe’s hairpin.
Suspension Geometry
As the majority of the corners at Monaco are low speed, there’s no reason not to run front and rear cambers of -2.50 and -1.00 respectively. These will also help you a little with keeping the car pointed in the right direction.
Tyre wear can be surprisingly brutal around Monte Carlo, so running the minimum toe options of 0.05 for the fronts and 0.20 for the rears will help a bit with keeping wear under control.
Suspension
Monaco has its fair share of lumps, bumps and undulations. That’s not even to mention the kerbs! Therefore, a nice, soft suspension setup will aid the car in dealing with these issues.
Specifically, using 2-3 for your suspension settings works pretty nicely. Running the absolute minimum suspension values might leave you struggling with the responsiveness of the car, but anything much stiffer than this will make the car very difficult to drive.
A soft front anti-roll bar will help with rotation, something sorely needed around here. With the rear anti-roll bar, the most important thing is to balance out the very soft front bar. Therefore, 2-9 is what I would suggest.
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Given the bumpiness of the circuit and the fact that you will need to ride a fair few kerbs over the course of a grand prix, a slightly higher than usual ride height of 4-6 is the order of the day. With this, the bumps and kerbs will unsettle the car much less than with a lower setting.
Brakes
Once again, 100% brake pressure with 50% brake bias to prevent too much front locking is what I would recommend. However, if ever there was a circuit to lower the brake pressure it would be this one, so do what makes you most comfortable in the car.
Tyres
While tyre wear is an issue, you don’t want to sacrifice the responsiveness of your front end in Monaco.
To strike an appropriate balancing between managing your front wear and getting the car turned in nicely, go for 23.0psi on your front tyre pressures.
For the rears, responsiveness is less of an issue. The smoother traction offered by lower rear tyre pressures is useful, so 20.7psi or perhaps even lower is the optimum setting for the rears.
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Monaco is an unbelievably tough circuit. With a track that is so ill-suited to modern F1 cars, there’s only so much a setup can do to help.
While this guide will get your car working nicely, it remains up to you to keep it out the barriers. Best of luck!
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