F1 2011
38 Achievements
1,000
20-25h
Drivers' World Champion (Hard)
You have won the Drivers' World Championship in Career on Hard or Expert Difficulty
100
How to unlock the Drivers' World Champion (Hard) achievement in F1 2011 - Definitive Guide
PLAYING ON HARD
If your going to try this on hard without switching assists, there's not much I can do to help besides telling you to know the tracks well and be able to manually shift. Plus, qualifying is very important.
ASSIST SWITCHING
If your starting a new career, I would suggest selecting Williams as your team.
If your at the beginning of a new season with a better team, like Red Bull or Ferrari, even better.
Go to my F1 and turn autosave off and then manually save it to make sure it doesn't come back on if you reloaded before saving. VulturousPiano and RaucousRichard confirmed that autosave DOES NOT have to be off.
When at the calendar, select the difficulty to Hard, race weekend to short, and distance three laps.
Skip practice unless you want to try it out, but I'd suggest going to qualifying.
For qualifying (and practice if your doing it) pause the game when they give you control of the car and switch manual to automatic, turn the suggested line on to always, and traction from medium to full. Keep auto brake off for now. Go ahead and qualify, by running decent laps and never going off track, I almost always managed to get 18th. There was usually a three to four second gap from 17th to 18th. If for some reason you have to go back to the garage or your satisfied with your time, pause the game and switch everything back until it says hard instead of custom. (a few times I forgot to do this but I still managed to get the achievement, so I'm not positive if you have to switch it back, but I did it to be safe). On to the race....
Again, once you get control of the car switch the same things that you did before. Now here's the most important part to winning the races, most tracks have a sharp turn at the beginning, so your going to want to try and get to at least the top 5 by charging through the field and braking late, hoping to bank off someone with out destroying your wing or getting a penalty and hope for another turn shortly or else they will get away. Also, I used KERS at the beginning to get more positions. Only twice did I get it on my first try, so it will take practice. (remember to switch everything back before restarting). Some tracks I knew I wouldn't win, so I was happy with a top five. Once your happy where you are settled, turn auto brake on and block as best that you can. (remember that you have two rewinds if someone gets by or you get a penalty). If you know the track well and feel comfortable without it, this isn't necessary, I just did it to prevent any slip ups and wasting my rewinds.
Before you cross the line on lap three, switch everything back so it says hard instead of custom and manually save it after the race if your happy with your result. (I forgot to do this once and dashboarded it before I got back to the menu just to be safe even though I had auto save off).
Overall it wasn't bad, I'm not sure how tough it will be with Williams, but I found it not too challenging with Red Bull. I won the championship on the fourth of last race and found that usually one or two guys will always win when you don't, so wrecking them and still winning without a penalty helps a ton. I would suggest focusing on winning though unless your only a few points away from clinching and want to get it over with quicker.
If you can shift well and know the tracks, you may be able to do hard without switching the assists.
Vytenis on x360a mentioned that the assist switching works as well, but I thought I'd put everything I know :)
If you still need help, leave a comment or PM me and I'll get back to you as soon as possible.
One thing that wasn't referred on any of the guides above is that there are plenty of setups out there to help you be faster. To edit your setup: while in the garage, go to the Car Monitor, then all the way to the right and then just follow the video. (Don't forget to save them so you can load them for each session, instead of doing everything all over again)
Here are the ones I used for each track:
- Australia (Credits to F1pateli)
- Malaysia (Credits to F1pateli)
- China (Credits to F1pateli)
- Turkey (Credits to SoCanadianGamer)
- Spain (Credits to F1pateli)
- Monaco (Credits to SoCanadianGamer)
- Canada (Credits to SoCanadianGamer)
- Europe (Credits to Stefan Corba)
- United Kingdom (Credits to F1pateli)
- Germany (Credits to rakka84)
- Hungary (Credits to letmeknownowhow)
- Belgium (Credits to F1pateli)
- Italy (Credits to rakka84)
- Singapore (Credits to F1pateli)
- Japan (Credits to rakka84)
- South Korea (Credits to F1pateli)
- India (Credits to F1pateli)
- Abu Dhabi (Credits to F1pateli)
- Brazil (Credits to rakka84)
Good Luck!
Using the above solution I left Autosave on and when I came back to the game my difficulty was changed from Hard to Custom.
I will attempt it next time with Autosave turned off.
- You can restart sessions at any time and also back up your save whenever you want so you will never have to move on from a session unless you are happy with the result. So just keep practicing at each race until you manage to win before moving on.
- You don't have to win every race so if there are tracks you hate, just move on when you get a decent result, or even take out your main championship rival so you don't lose any points in the title fight.
- When it comes to qualifying, you don't really need to be grabbing pole every race, the AI have bad starts in general and you have all of your KERS that you can use to your advantage at the start. If you can get in the top 6-8 or so, you should still be able to get into 1st at turn one by out breaking everyone else. You can afford to be reckless as you can restart and try as many times as you want.
- You will have to get used to manual gears, which can be a pain if you aren't, but overall, hard is very doable, especially in one of the top teams and it is certainly a lot more forgiving than expert. Just get used to listening to the engine noise which will tell you when to change gear. There is also a series of flashing lights on the screen that flash when it's time to change, the location depends on the camera you are using.
- Another trophy that you can work towards that will give your practice session more of a purpose is "Test Driver", see that trophy for more info.
Exploits: For and easier time on hard you should see the start of the road map for details on a small exploit that makes a big difference to performance. There is also a way to use assists on hard, much like last year. It requires you to turn off auto-save from the MyF1 menu. When starting a session, always make sure the difficulty says hard. During the session when out on track, pause and switch on the assists you need before switching them back so it says hard before returning to the garage or ending a race/session. Doing it every time you return to the garage may not be necessary but it doesn't hurt to play it safe. The game should not auto save when you switch your assists since you turned it off, just remember to actually make manual saves so that you don't lose your progress.
Unless you're a real life F1 driver, I suggest you stick with hard rather than expert. Here is what the hard difficulty entails:
- Pro AI.
- Traction Control on Medium.
- ABS on.
- Full Simulation Settings (Tyre wear, fuel etc).
- No Dynamic Racing Line.
- Manual Gearbox.
- Full Damage.
- Two Flashbacks.
The pro AI are no slouches, so you're going to need to be at one of the best teams, such as Red Bull, Ferrari or McLaren. Therefore, you won't be able to attempt this until at least your second season in Career.
The biggest obstacle for most will be traction control, followed by manual gearing. With traction control on medium, you have a little bit of lee-way with your throttle application, but it is still easy to spin. Basically when taking corners, you want to go around them at a constant speed (relative to the corner). When exiting, if you apply too much throttle your rear tyres will spin, losing traction. This usually ends badly. It takes a lot of practice to get used to driving without full traction control. On full you're basically super glued to the track. Going to medium, it's akin to driving on an ice rink.
Sudden throttle application leads to wheel spin, which leads to loss of traction. Keep this in mind when racing.
Again, when it comes to manual gears, it is all about practice. Some corners you'll be going down to 1st gear or 2nd gear, you need to test it yourself, so take advantage of the practice sessions. Shifting up is quite simple, listen to the engine and watch the rev limiter, when it's in the red or the engine starts "screaming" at you, it's time to shift.
In the races, be smart. Do not use all of your KERS on the very first straight, you may need to defend against AI later in the lap and KERS is a very effective means of defence. Stay out of trouble, be consistent and hopefully you'll come away with some solid points. You do not need to win every race!
If you want to be a little bit sneaky, it is possible to cause other cars to retire, by making them run into the back of you. For some reason, the back of your car is extremely strong. If you find yourself in front of someone, brake a little harder than usual. If they run up the back of you, they will likely retire. This is an easy way of knocking your rivals out, if they're getting too close to you in the Championship. It's not really in the spirit of the sport, but in terms of getting the achievement the easiest way possible, it is fair game.
Finish on top of the Drivers World Championship table with the difficulty set to hard to unlock this achievement.
Note: Easier method:
When you are starting your career, set the difficulty to hard before each race. Once you're on the grid, enter the pause menu and change the assists to whatever you are comfortable with. For example, you can change manual transmission to automatic, traction control to full etc. You will still be racing professional AI and there will be tyre wear + fuel to take into account. When you are about to cross the finish line, enter the pause menu and reset the assists back to what they were on hard. This tricks the game into thinking you have been playing on hard the whole time.
You can leave auto save on (ignore the fact that it autosaves when you change assists, it doesn't matter). However you may prefer to turn it off and save manually, as it is sometimes easy to forget to change the settings back to hard.
Make sure you don't save any setups while you have the settings changed. You can restart a race with the assists changed, just make sure you change them back to hard before ending the session.
Unless you're a real life F1 driver, I suggest you stick with hard rather than expert. Here is what the hard difficulty entails:
- Pro AI.
- Traction Control on Medium.
- ABS on.
- Full Simulation Settings (Tyre wear, fuel etc).
- No Dynamic Racing Line.
- Manual Gearbox.
- Full Damage.
- Two Flashbacks.
The pro AI are no slouches, so you're going to need to be at one of the best teams, such as Red Bull, Ferrari or McLaren. Therefore, you won't be able to attempt this until at least your second season in Career.
The biggest obstacle for most will be traction control, followed by manual gearing. With traction control on medium, you have a little bit of lee-way with your throttle application, but it is still easy to spin. Basically when taking corners, you want to go around them at a constant speed (relative to the corner). When exiting, if you apply too much throttle your rear tyres will spin, losing traction. This usually ends badly. It takes a lot of practice to get used to driving without full traction control. On full you're basically super glued to the track. Going to medium, it's akin to driving on an ice rink.
Sudden throttle application leads to wheel spin, which leads to loss of traction. Keep this in mind when racing.
Again, when it comes to manual gears, it is all about practice. Some corners you'll be going down to 1st gear or 2nd gear, you need to test it yourself, so take advantage of the practice sessions. Shifting up is quite simple, listen to the engine and watch the rev limiter, when it's in the red or the engine starts "screaming" at you, it's time to shift.
In the races, be smart. Do not use all of your KERS on the very first straight, you may need to defend against AI later in the lap and KERS is a very effective means of defence. Stay out of trouble, be consistent and hopefully you'll come away with some solid points. You do not need to win every race!
If you want to be a little bit sneaky, it is possible to cause other cars to retire, by making them run into the back of you. For some reason, the back of your car is extremely strong. If you find yourself in front of someone, brake a little harder than usual. If they run up the back of you, they will likely retire. This is an easy way of knocking your rivals out, if they're getting too close to you in the Championship. It's not really in the spirit of the sport, but in terms of getting the achievement the easiest way possible, it is fair game.
Finish on top of the Drivers World Championship table with the difficulty set to hard to unlock this achievement.
Note: Easier method:
When you are starting your career, set the difficulty to hard before each race. Once you're on the grid, enter the pause menu and change the assists to whatever you are comfortable with. For example, you can change manual transmission to automatic, traction control to full etc. You will still be racing professional AI and there will be tyre wear + fuel to take into account. When you are about to cross the finish line, enter the pause menu and reset the assists back to what they were on hard. This tricks the game into thinking you have been playing on hard the whole time.
You can leave auto save on (ignore the fact that it autosaves when you change assists, it doesn't matter). However you may prefer to turn it off and save manually, as it is sometimes easy to forget to change the settings back to hard.
Make sure you don't save any setups while you have the settings changed. You can restart a race with the assists changed, just make sure you change them back to hard before ending the session.