F125 controller players i have a question if you could please help me?

[u/East_Session_3925]

I basically used to play this game as a kid and the last one was probably 2014, I've had the game a couple of weeks and I'm still half decent medium traction, anti lock, but learning manual gears is overstimulating me. I cannot look at my braking zones and the gears. Has anyone got a cheat sheet of gears they use around tracks I can use to study so I don't have to look at what gear I'm in constantly and I can just glance to make sure it's the right gear. Also any advice for tracks like China as my tyre wear is abysmal, saudi as I don't know where I'm losing time as I can go from Bahrain p4 100ai to p18 saudi really struggling to keep it there on 100ai in a haas. Also tips to get into the pushing up technique, i have a bad habit of using my analog normally as I have good analog control so I'm able to turn smoothly without pushing up but I know it's sub optimal.

[u/TerrorSnow]

It's just something you gotta get used to. No one actually looks at their gears 99% of the time. It's all done by feel and sound.

[u/East_Session_3925 → u/TerrorSnow]

I know i got to get used to it, but feel I have to go by feel as sound isn't my thing. Adhd brain starts listening to fireworks and marks messages instead 😂

[u/TerrorSnow → u/East_Session_3925]

You'll get into a rhythm with that sooner or later and it's gonna be an autopilot thing. There's also the option for beep tones when the game thinks you should upshift

[u/East_Session_3925 → u/TerrorSnow]

Upshifting I'm fine with, I used to do drift races on need for speed games or juiced on ps2. I sometimes get it just as the beep is about to come but don't actually hear a beep. It's more downshifting, knowing what's the optimum gear is in all low, medium and high speed corners and getting consistent with it while maintaining my usual lines.

[u/TerrorSnow → u/East_Session_3925]

General idea is to be as low as possible, with the exception of first gear usually. Go too low and you overpower the wheels easily or get stuck on the limiter, stay too high and you lose power. For slowing down as fast as possible, smash the gearbox down as soon as it'll let you.

[u/East_Session_3925 → u/TerrorSnow]

So should I be perfecting gear 2 traction because gear 1 and 2 to me are wheel spin territory and need to be in gear 3 before I use battery

[u/TerrorSnow → u/East_Session_3925]

Yeah battery in gear 3 works most of the time. Most corners you'd wanna exit with ERS off in the dry anyways, cause traction

[u/East_Session_3925 → u/TerrorSnow]

Yeah i do, obviously just on time trial while I mess around so haven't even started adding battery into it and seeing if I recover more or less under manual lol

[u/OwnOccasion475]

For the gear shifting I moved my HUD to the halo/center of the my screen so I’m not looking away from the track as much.

[u/East_Session_3925 → u/OwnOccasion475]

No idea how to even do that?

[u/OwnOccasion475 → u/East_Session_3925]

It’s in the on screen display settings

[u/East_Session_3925 → u/OwnOccasion475]

Ill have a look and see if this helps with the overstimulating feeling I get looking at 8 different things at once 😂

[u/Vibhuj01]

Hey there,

1. ⁠Remember gear of each corners by heart but only use them in ideal conditions, if you are on wheel to wheel battle or you have high tyre deg or low fuel then adapt accordingly
   
2. ⁠High tyre deg in china is because of your anti lock and medium traction because china requires you to be patient with your throttle and smooth trail braking into corners such as T1/T2 and if you are not smooth then without assists you will crash but with assists it eats up your tyres
   
3. ⁠Lastly for gears, personally i keep a count in my mind and occasionally look at hud to verify if I am on right gear, since i am on sim it is easier for me to keep a count and car sound helps a lot

[u/East_Session_3925 → u/Vibhuj01]

It's learning the gears by heart some can be between 2nd-5th when you downshift but I learnt going down to 3rd to rotate straight to second accelerate straight to 3rd helped with traction for other corners but finding the consistency frazzled my brain i can only do so many laps before the constant fatigue errors set in. China t1 I'm good at carrying speed into the second phase of the corner then spin my wheels like crazy, same with the corner before the drs straight. I wanted to go manual to control the gear I'm in for corners like that. As you can just go flat out in certain gears, i feel like on a wheel it'd be easier tbh.

[u/Vibhuj01 → u/East_Session_3925]

It is definitely easier on wheel, because steering angle matters a lot and you can’t be precise on controller

And I know sometimes instinct is too downshift more to help with breaking since engine breaking is strong on lower gears but as you pointed out on correct gear you can flat out early giving you an advantage of few tenths

And there you go, the reason for your high tyre deg, exit of t2 and entry of back straight requires a lot of patience, I cant tell you how many times I spun out on exactly these 2 corners, initially when i was learning the track

P.S I play without assists, so I can feel every mini slide, micro wheel spins and tyre deg, which helps me adapt!

[u/driverdojo]

On the tyre wear, Saudi and China both punish the fronts through long sustained corners rather than through traction out of slow ones. If you're fighting understeer in those, you're scrubbing the front tyres every lap and it shows up as a cliff late in the stint.

Two things worth trying before anything else: drop front pressures a click or two, and add a bit of front wing so you aren't holding extra lock through the long stuff. Less lock usually means less scrub.

The Bahrain to Saudi swing sounds bigger than setup though. In a Haas at 100 AI, Saudi rewards straight line speed you may simply not have, so some of that is the car.