Ideas

herr_leguon's avatar
herr_leguon
Seasoned Newcomer
1 day ago
Status:
New

AI pace in Qualifying

Hey everyone,

I'm running into a really frustrating issue with the 2026 Season Pack in F1 25 and wanted to see if I’m the only one.

Basically, whenever I'm in Qualifying, the AI pace feels perfectly fine and realistic while I'm out on track. But as soon as I decide to end the session a few minutes early (and let the game simulate the rest), the AI suddenly turns into absolute monsters. They post times that are completely out of reach.

It gets even weirder when it’s raining, they seem to be even faster in the simulation than they are when I'm actually driving. It feels like the simulation algorithm just throws the difficulty settings out the window and gives them a massive speed boost that shouldn't be there.

Has anyone else noticed this? It’s pretty annoying to have a great session only to get bumped down the order because the AI suddenly found 1-2 seconds in the simulation.

1 Comment

  • The Ai cars do tend to get quicker as the session goes on. I think they're trying to simulate the idea that most drivers go out for a "banker" lap at the start before pushing in earnest near the end.

    What I normally do is go out and do a benchmarking lap myself, then come in and fast forward until there's 2.5 - 3 minutes left on the clock. At this point the AI will have set mostly representative times, so I put on a fresh set of tires and go out for a second lap.

    To manage the tires I always use the same set for my first run in each session so I'll have enough fresh softs for the run that counts.