Revised downforce modelling and tyre wear curves mean last season's setups no longer hold. Our engineers break down the impact.
The latest Nitro Circuit patch reworks downforce scaling at high speed and steepens tyre wear on abrasive surfaces. In practice, low-drag qualifying setups are now noticeably slower over a full race distance.
Our testing across six circuits shows an average two-tenths loss on flying laps for the old low-downforce baseline, with a corresponding gain of nearly a second per stint on race pace for balanced setups.
The hot-lap ladder resets with the patch. Previous times remain in the archive for reference but no longer count toward invitational seeding.
