F1 2013

Introduction:
First of all, I'm not going to sugar coat this one. As a veteran of all 4 F1 games from Codemasters, I have to say that this is the hardest achievement so far.

The achievement name "Always Believe in Yourself" really does hold true here. This is a difficult achievement. Very difficult.

Getting gold on this circuit also goes towards the "Gold Fever" achievement:


After about 6-7hours of trying, I have finally just unlocked the achievement. Now, I cannot tell you how to get this achievement, but I can provide you with some tips, tricks and observations of the AI into how I managed to pull it off.

Set up:
From the main menu, choose "F1 Classics" and then "Time Attack". From here, there are 3 circuits which you can choose from: Jerez, Estoril and Imola. For each circuit you will be given a different car.
For Estoril, you will be given Nigel Mansells Williams FW14b, and Damon Hills FW18 Williams at Imola, which are cars from 1992 and 1996 respectively.

Seeing as we need to use a car from the 80's for this achievement, this leaves you only 1 choice for this achievement, and that is Jerez, which in my opinion is the most difficult of the 4 classic circuits. Fortunately, you are given one of the best cars from the 80's in the game, which is Mansells 1988 Williams FW12.

For the 90's cars, I earned the gold medal on these tracks within 3 attempts each. For Jerez, it took me 6-7 hours of trying.
Needless to say, this achievement requires a few things: practice, luck, commitment, time, effort, persistence and faultless driving.
Also, because the circuit is new to the Codemasters F1 franchise, chances are you won't have raced on it before so you also need to learn the circuit.

As for my actual car setup, I did this with the braking assist OFF, but with all others ON (this is how I always race these games).

The Circuit:
Jerez is a fast, flowing circuit with many high-speed corners. Think of the "Esses" from Suzuka, but applied to pretty much the whole lap. Getting a good lap here is very demanding, but also very satisfying.

Below is a link to the circuit layout along with corner numbers:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9a/Circ....svg

Tips / Help / Observations:

1) Fractions of a second MATTER.
I know this is an F1 game where fractions have always mattered, but you can usually get away with the odd mistake. Not here, so I simply cannot emphasise this enough for this achievement.

2) Remember you can manually downshift gears, which can help slowing the car down in certain corners. I found this to be of great benefit in turns 1, 5, 6, 9 and 16.

3) Avoid applying full throttle out of turns 1, 2, 8, 9, 12, 13 & 16. This will only cause the traction control to kick in and when following the gold ghost, you will realise just how much time you lose doing this.
I tried manually shifting up a gear to help counter this, but the game has a habit of over-riding this and automatically dropping it back down again! So I found no benefit to trying this approach.

4) Following on from not applying full throttle, remember that you can "feather the throttle" (apply only a quarter or half throttle) which will keep you going, and as soon as the wheels are facing forwards, apply full throttle.

5) Don't be disheartened through turns 1 and 2 if the AI is just ahead of you, I found this to be almost impossible to overcome and only managed to be ahead of it on 1 or 2 occasions.

6) The AI runs slightly wide through turns 5 and 6, and is fairly slow through turns 7 and 8, so you must take this opportunity and make the most of it.
My preferred strategy is to manually drop a gear just before turn 5 and then go flat out through it, dropping again manually for turn 6, and then down 2 gears manually for turn 7. Doing this, I could always go from being about 0.200 seconds down, to about 0.400 seconds ahead of the AI (i.e. a gain of 0.600 seconds in the space of 3 corners).
Just ensure that you get a good exit from turn 8 to really make this count.

7) Turn 11 is a strange corner, which the AI appears to take flat out (on a different line, I would add), but I could never find any way to take this corner flat.
I always found it best to manually drop a gear (without braking), lift the throttle just a bit before hitting the apex and then going flat out up the hill.

8) Turn 13 doesn't require dropping a gear or braking, just come off the throttle and force the car through the corner.

9) Turns 14 and 15 should be taken flat out, and you can cut the inside of 15 without penalty (although I didn't find that it gave any advantage).

10) The AI is brutal through turn 16. For F1 veterans, its comparable to the final corner at Malaysia.
Make sure you practice this corner, and remember tip 4 about feathering the throttle here. The entry is fairly easy, its the exit which is difficult. On many occasions, I turned a certain gold medal into nothing by engaging too much throttle on the exit.

Summing it up
If you didn't know this circuit before this game, or knew of it but not the layout, then by the time you have this achievement, you will know it like the back of your hand!

Fortunately, if you are a huge F1 fan like myself, then you will find this both challenging and rewarding, and the scream of that engine is a joy to listen to.
It also gives you so much more respect for the actual people who raced there, and put in laps like this:



Good luck!

Just to add to some of my tips. I changed from full TCS to medium, you can gain loads of time from rolling the throttle on rather than the computer cutting with traction control to slow up down.

i also changed my style of driving for this track, instead of aggresively attacking the corner, you want to slow down early, build the throttle through the turn and aim for the far edge of the track. pre-judge the end of the turn and get on the throttle using the full width of the track. i literally just took a second of my PB with these simple changes.