The Monte Carlo Street Circuit is regarded as the most challenging on the entire F1 calendar. With a tight, twisty layout and the barriers always right next to you, it’s always a challenge to get to the end of this race without crashing or damaging your front wing.
The general setup route is pretty obvious for this circuit – you need to run maximum levels of downforce for the best lap times on this track. No other route really works.
Here’s a general baseline dry race setup for Monaco for a controller user:
- Wings – 47/50
- Diff – 50/55
- Camber – -2.50/-1.00/0.06/0.27
- Suspension – 12-7-7-2-36-42
- Brakes – 100 Pressure/55 Bias
- Tyre pressures – Minimum front and rear
This is a setup partially adapted from the SimRacingSetups YouTube channel, an excellent F1 gaming setup resource, but modified substantially for a pad user since he’s a wheel user and runs much more aggressive wing levels which I find don’t translate at all to a controller.
For sure, this is a setup more for a stable race pace than for blisteringly fast one lap pace. It’s designed to be a relatively easy setup to lap consistently with, which is what you need round here. With this track it’s all about getting to the end unscathed, but you can tweak the setting for qualifying if you need to.
Additional Setup Considerations
Here are some additional setup considerations for racing at Monaco.
Wing levels
On most of my pad setups, I set the rear wing 2 clicks above the front wing for optimal turn in and stability. But at Monaco, I found even this was causing me to lose traction and stability and also turn in too quickly/too much round some of the faster corners like the Swimming Pool section.
The pad handling is very responsive, so I found it better to space the rear wing 3 clicks above the front wing, even though this would seem unusual at Monaco. It allowed me to lap more consistently without feeling so much in danger of hitting barriers, which is the main thing for longer races there.
Qualifying
If you can control the sharper response and still get good traction and corner exits, you can try using 48/50, 49/50 or 50/50 wings for better turn in and single lap pace.
But I like the wings spaced apart when using a controller, with the rear above the front for better stability in races. But it can compromise one lap pace, so try being more aggressive in Quali if it works for you, since track position is crucial at Monaco.
Tyre Pressures
Tyres are extremely prone to overheating at Monte Carlo, because you’ve got loads of successive corners and not many straights to give the tyres a break and let them cool down. You need minimum pressures or close to it front and rear to avoid overheating in races.
Intermediate Conditions
There isn’t any more wing to really add to the dry setup at Monaco, so just using that will work OK in intermediate conditions (you can increase the front wing if you can handle the sharper turn in on a pad). Reducing rear tyre pressures to minimum if not already there, and using 50 on throttle diff for best traction out of the slow speed corners also helps.
Full Wet Conditions
Again, you’re already at max wing levels, and moving the front wing up closer to the rear wing will probably make traction and stability harder in the wet. Over-rotation is your enemy on this game when using a pad in wet conditions.
Therefore, it’s just really a case of keeping the wing levels the same, and just tweaking the ride height (higher) and suspension for full wet conditions.
Here would be the full wet controller setup I’d use at Monaco:
- Wings 47/50
- Diff – 50/55
- Camber – -2.50/-1.00/0.00/0.10
- Suspension – 10-6-6-1-39-43
- Brakes – 95 Pressure/55 Bias
- Tyre pressures – Fronts minimum/Rears minimum
See our guide on converting dry setups to wet setups for more detailed information on this.
Other Race Setup Sites
The setups I provide are just baseline setups to get started and tweak to your preference. There’s a lot of room for one lap pace optimization, and there’s different routes to go down for race setups as well.
If you’re looking for more Monaco race setups, check out these resources:
- F1laps.com Monaco page– Another car setup forum with pages for every track, and loads of custom setups posted, both TT and race, all cars, all conditions.
- F1gamesetup.com – An even more specialized resource with custom setups, every car and every track, wet and dry weather.
Tips For Driving Round Here
Here’s a few extra things to bear in mind racing at Monaco:
Qualifying – Qualifying position and track position is key at Monaco, since overtaking is very difficult. Therefore focus on one lap pace and tweak your front wing levels if necessary in qualifying to get the best starting position possible for your car and pace. It’s difficult to make up lots of places at Monaco.
Pit strategy – Because overtaking it so difficult here, you may have to do the bulk of your overtaking via the pit stops. The undercut can be powerful here, especially if there’s a bunch of cars in front of you. Try pitting a few laps early and jumping a few cars in the pit stops. Once you’re in front of cars, as long as you lap consistently and use ERS when needed on the pit straight, it’s nearly impossible for cars to re-overtake you again.
Rear tyres – As you reach the end of tyre stints here and the rear tyres start to wear (and possibly overheat), traction becomes noticeably more difficult. Be more patient and progressive with the throttle as your tyres start to reach the end of their life.
ERS – The battery runs out very quickly round here because of the max downforce levels, and is very hard to recoup. Use sparingly – out-laps and in-laps are the most crucial times to save a big ERS boost for, as most of your overtaking will need to be done at the pitstops.
Consistency – Monaco is definitely one of those tracks where you need to sacrifice a bit of raw pace and just focus on getting into a rhythm and lapping consistently, to get to the end of the race. If you start trying to overdrive and “force” quicker lap times, you’re very likely to crash or damage your wing, and you’re then screwed at such a twisty circuit.
Some top notch players have the talent to lap very fast and consistent around Monaco, but for most players, it’s best to focus on consistent lapping rather than blistering pace. Especially in online league races. Just focus on avoiding damage and getting to the end, because you can be guaranteed a bunch of cars won’t make it or will end up doing 4 or more stops and start running out of front wings, and you’ll finish in a good position.
