Getting Started

Launching the game

After installing, start F1 Simulator from the Start menu, or from the desktop icon if you chose to create one. The game opens at the main menu, with an AI car lapping the current circuit in the background. F11 switches between full screen and a window at any time.

You need a 64-bit version of Windows 10 or 11 and a graphics card with OpenGL 3.3. As a guide, a GTX 1050 Ti runs the game at about 150 frames per second at 1600×900. A keyboard is enough to play, but a gamepad or a wheel and pedals make it much easier to drive smoothly.

Using the menus

Pressing a letter again cycles through the items that share it. If only one item starts with that letter, the letter opens it straight away. The exceptions are Quit, Main menu and Restart, which still need Enter, so you can't trigger them by accident. Each menu remembers the item you used last.

The main menu

Choosing a track

The game remembers the circuit you picked. A simple built-in Procedural Test Circuit only appears if the track files are missing.

Choosing a car

There are seventeen cars, from the 1967 Ferrari 312 to the 2022 Gulf McLaren (see Cars). The choice is cosmetic: every car drives with the same modern F1 physics, so you're not giving anything away by picking the one you like. In a race, the other cars in the collection become your opponents.

Choosing a controller

You can drive with a keyboard, a mouse, a gamepad, or a wheel and pedals, and you don't have to choose one. Whichever device you touched last takes over. Moving a stick or pressing a button counts. A pedal resting slightly pressed doesn't, so it won't lock out your other devices.

Keyboard

Steer with A/D or ←/→, accelerate with W/↑, and brake with S/↓. Steering builds up gradually rather than snapping to full lock. You can change how fast with Keyboard steering speed. Throttle and brake are all-or-nothing on a keyboard, so this is the hardest way to drive. Keep the assists on.

Gamepad

The left stick steers, RT is throttle, LT is brake, and RB/LB shift up and down. No setup is needed. The analogue triggers make a gamepad far smoother than the keyboard.

Mouse

Press M to switch to mouse steering. Moving the mouse left and right turns the wheel, and it slowly re-centres itself. The left button is throttle, the right button is brake, and the scroll wheel changes gear. You can tune it with Mouse sensitivity and Mouse recentering.

Wheel and pedals, or a joystick

These need a one-time calibration, described below.

Setting up a wheel or joystick

1. Plug it in before you start the game, or use Rescan devices in Controls, Sound & Assists.
2. Check that Controller shows your device. If you have more than one, press ←/→ on that line to pick the right one.
3. Choose Calibrate controller and follow the prompts:
   1. Centre the wheel.
   2. Turn it fully left, then fully right.
   3. Press the throttle pedal, then the brake pedal. On a joystick, pull the stick back at the brake step: forward becomes throttle and back becomes brake.
   4. Press your upshift paddle, then your downshift paddle.
   Press Enter to confirm each step, or Esc to cancel. The calibration is saved and used every time you play.
4. Then fine-tune steering, throttle and brake separately:
   • Deadzone: how much movement is ignored around the rest position. Raise it if the car drifts with your hands off the wheel.
   • Sensitivity: the overall gain.
   • Linearity: above 1 makes the centre gentler and the ends sharper. Below 1 does the opposite.
   • Saturation: how much travel reaches 100%. Lower it if you can't quite reach full throttle or full brake.
   A live readout of steering, throttle and brake at the bottom of the screen shows the effect of each change straight away.

Driving assists

All three start switched on. Turn them off one at a time as you get faster. Driving Tips suggests an order.

Controls, Sound & Assists

Settings are saved when you leave the menu, and remembered between sessions.

The pause menu

Press Esc or P while driving (Start on a gamepad):