F1 25 Driver Career Guide For Beginners

Should You Start in F1 or F2? – F1 25 Driver Career Guide

Ultimately, it does not matter where you start your Driver Career. If you want some extra experience before facing the best, then try a season of F2. Personally, I like to do a season of F2 before going to Formula 1 because it feels fun to watch that progression. But if you’d rather skip straight to F1, feel free to do so.

Additionally, F1 25 lets you drive as any current Formula 1 or Formula 2 driver, along with any Driver Icons if you enabled them. Furthermore, you can also add an 11th team to the grid like APXGP from F1 the Movie, or Konnersport from Braking Point 3. Feel free to use any driver you wish, just keep in mind they’ll be a different age, have a different starting rating, and won’t be customizable.

Therefore, will continue this guide assuming you created a custom driver.

Like My Team, you can use a Full Season Format (24 races) or a Custom Season format (16 or 10 races per season). We recommend playing a full season so you can see all circuits.

Afterwards, you can use the game’s recommended settings, or create your own Custom Settings. we recommend the latter to allow you to create a more personalized experience. For, we recommend looking at these settings:

• Assists
  • Steering Assist – Game helps the player make turns when necessary (also helps with braking)
  • Recurring Rewind Prompt – Lets the game remind you when to use Rewind

For difficulty, you can choose to use Adaptive AI, which as the name suggests, lets the AI improve or decline based on your performance. We recommend turning this off and playing around with the dial yourself. Overall, the difficulty meter goes from 0-110, with 0 being the easiest. For newcomers, try starting somewhere between 19-25 and adjust as you see fit.

In the Weekend Structure tab, you can adjust the length of events in your season. Here’s what we recommend for each event:

• Qualifying Format – One-Shot
• Session Length – Short (25% of actual race length) or Very Short (5 Laps)

The Qualifying Format is important because it decides where you start on the grid during the race. You can either do a One-Shot Qualifier, or a Short Qualifier. Both essentially require you to go as fast as possible, but One-Shots only require one lap. Therefore, we recommend them.

Session Length can be whatever you prefer but just keep in mind that long races will take awhile. I prefer a Short Race length, which is long, but not to the point where it gets boring. You can adjust this setting afterwards, but once you head into Race Weekend, you’ll be locked in with the Length you’ve chosen.

Driver Creation, Academy, & Contract – Driver Career F1 25 Guide

In the Driver Creation Menu, mostly everything is preferential. But take your time on the Academy menu, where you can choose from one of seven academies as your background. Overall, the F1 25 Driver Career Academies include:

• Mercedes
• Ferrari
• Red Bull
• Alpine
• McLaren
• Williams
• Sauber

Choosing an Academy does not mean you’ll be driving for that team. Instead, it only improves your recognition with them. So, say you want to start with Kick Sauber, with a goal of driving for Ferrari. Then select the Ferrari Academy.

Afterwards, you’ll select which team you want to drive for. When you pick a team, you’ll need to replace one driver. So if you want to drive with Lando Norris, you can replace Oscar Piastri.

Now that we’ve created your character, it’s time to head onto Driver Career. But before we head onto the circuit, there’s things we need to look at.

Off The Circuit – F1 25 Driver Career Guide

Off the circuit, you’ll have various things to do and take care of. For your convenience, we simplified each page, along the tabs within each.

On the Overview Page, you can advance time and check messages. But only advance time when you’re completely ready to move forward. Before that, we suggest visiting the other pages.

On the Specialists Page, you work with different experts, planners, engineers, and more improve your driver over time. At first, you’ll only have access to the Manufacturing Expert, but other experts will visit throughout the season. These people don’t stick around for the whole season, so make sure to visit the available ones every week.

Specialists provide goals for you to complete. Completion of a goal results in different Perks that will improve you and your car. You can decide to do one of the two goals provided, but we recommend picking the one that you feel you can accomplish.

The Driver Details Page page is where you can review your contract, customize your gear, view your accolades, and check on your rivalries.

In Contracts, you can review your contract and adjust your goals. Or, you can even break your contract, though we don’t recommend doing that. In general, it’s good to have solid recognition and good rapport with your team and others in the league. It’ll help in future Contract Talks when you want to re-sign.

On the Accolades Tab, you can check your current list of Accolades. Completing these career milestones provides permanent ratings boost to your character, making them better on the grid. We’ll dive into ratings soon.

The Driver Ratings Graph, Comparison, and Customization Tab aren’t nearly as important. But they’re useful for comparing yourself to the rest of the league, while also making changes to your race gear.

R&D is where you’ll research parts for your car in F1 25. Overall, there are four main categories when it comes to car upgrades:

• Aerodynamics – Responsible for development to both front and rear downforce properties. Additionally, this department minimizes drag and improving effectiveness of DRS
• Chassis – Responsible for overall mass of the vehicle + weight distribution. Also enhances tire and brake lifespan.
• Powertrain – Responsible for car performance, fuel consumption, and ERS potential
• Durability – Develops improvements for car that reduce wear and tear of parts like the Power Unit and Gear Box

We recommend upgrading all parts equally, with priority on both Aerodynamic and Durability upgrades. Chassis is also important for tire preservation, which helps on longer courses.

Powertrain isn’t so important. It helps with fuel consumption, which isn’t an issue on short race sessions. While improving your ERS is good, it’s not as important as your Aerodynamics, Chassis, or Durability.

Aerodynamics is a must-have, especially because of its improvements to the DRS. The better your Aerodynamics, the easier it’ll be to catch up and overtake the cars ahead of you.

You can check the progress of your upgrades, but keep in mind that each upgrade takes time. You’ll need to advance your schedule in order to let the days go by. And even then, it’s not guaranteed your part will be ready.

On the Vehicles Page, you’ll need to manage your car’s parts throughout the season. Each lap puts some wear and tear on your vehicle, and eventually you’ll need to replace those parts as the season goes on. The more worn out a part is, the more likely it is to break down or give you problems during a race.

Thankfully, the game gives you an ‘Expected lifespan’ for all parts, giving you a good idea of how much longer it can go for. Generally, a good rule of thumb is to replace a part it’s nearing its lap limit, but not too often. Each part can only be replaced a finite number of times, meaning you need to be careful with how you drive.

You can order an additional part if you reach your limit, but it will cost you in the end. So plan ahead before each race, and drive carefully on the circuit!

The next tab in this page is called “Weekend tire allocation”. Essentially, this is where you can change your tire setup. For new players, we recommend keeping it as the default for most of the time. Over time, you’ll have a better idea of which circuits and tire allocations you want to use during the season.

Driver Ratings Guide – F1 25 Driver Career Guide

Before we head out onto the circuit, you should know about the different driver ratings you’ll be attempting to increase throughout the year:

• Rating (RTG): A driver’s overall rating
• Experience (EXP): Based on driver’s amount of races (experience in the league). More races equals a higher rating
• Racecraft (RAC): A driver’s ability to finish a race higher than where they initially started.
• Awareness (AWA): A driver’s ability to avoid penalties and drive clean.
• Pace (PAC): How close a driver is to matching the fastest Race/Qualifying times in each race weekend in comparison to their teammate

Generally, as long you as you perform well, all of these ratings will increase throughout your career. You just need to find the perfect balance between risk and caution to increase both your awareness as well as your Racecraft and Pace.

But keep in mind that your contract goal will require you to reach the rating you set for yourself. By the end of your first season, you should at least aim for a 69-70 OVR RTG.

And that includes everything you need to know about your Driver. But now we’ll head out to the Race Weekend and go over some tips and tricks.

Race Weekend – F1 25 Driver Career Guide

At last, we reached Race Weekend. Before the actual race begins, you’ll set up your car and run some practices before your qualifier. Depending on the race and track’s conditions, you should use the following tires in the following ways:

• Small Tires – Ideal for fast laps and overtakes
• Medium Tires – Balance of grip and durability
• Heavy Tires – Ideal for maintaining position with tire durability
• Wet Tires – Ideal for wet conditions

On a dry circuit, I typically like to start with small tires to start things off fast. I find it much easier to maintain a 1st place position than it is to overtake multiple drivers. Then, when I pit, I’ll switch to Medium or Heavy tires to help maintain my position and tire durability.

During Race Weekend, you’ll get some experience on the track before the official GP begins. This typically includes three practice sessions and a qualifier followed by the race.

In Practice Sessions, you can complete up to 15 different objectives across three different categories (5 each). We recommend completing these objectives completely to both:

• Give you experience on the circuit
• Provide you with development boosts

These objectives are easy to accomplish, and teach you about some key racing mechanics. For example, the Fuel Management helps with your Rear Downforce, Turbo Durability, and Engine Power, and all you need to do is conserve fuel for a perfect rating.

You get three practice sessions in total, providing you with more than enough time to complete your objectives. And if you’re having trouble completing one of them, you can alway simulate a session, which usually provides you with enough time to complete any leftover programs.

After the Practice Session comes the Qualifier. Here, you just need to race as fast as possible to secure a pole position. The better you perform, the less overtakes you’ll have to perform in the long run.

Starting at 1st place comes with its privileges. Firstly, you usually avoid that initial part of a race where cars can possibly collide with each other. Secondly, if you’re on a track like Monaco, where overtakes are difficult, it’s better to start off in 1st. But it won’t always be like that. Therefore, the Qualifier is your best shot of helping you get a stress-free start to a race.

Make good use of the Rewind feature, which allows you to go back in time in case you made a mistake. This is useful if you make an ugly turn, or get into an even uglier collision. Just make sure that the Rewind Assist is set to On before heading onto Race Weekend.

Overall, that wraps up our F1 25 Driver Career Guide for beginners. We hope this guide helped you understand the basics of the mode. Soon enough, you’ll get the handle of it as you compete against the best on the grid. We wish you the best of luck!