The Circuit of the Americas is one of the finest circuits that Hermann Tilke has designed. It has had a regular place on the F1 calendar since 2012, and it has produced some brilliant spectacles.
The track itself was designed to incorporate aspects of other circuits around the world. The first sector is primarily based upon the esses at Suzuka, for instance.
As such, it’s a circuit with a wide variety of corners, and a setup which can handle everything that the track throws at the car is essential.
Aerodynamics
The most important part of any setup is the wing settings.
Around here, 3-7 gives the best balance between a car which can fly down the straights, a car which is stable under acceleration, and a car which can corner at speed.
Turning up the front wing a little would yield more lap time, but the car would become quite difficult to drive.
Transmission
An on-throttle setting of 50% is my go-to recommendation in F1 2020, and that remains the case at the Circuit of the Americas.
For your off-throttle differential, I would go with 55% here. The car tends to be quite stable through the corners even which such a low setting, and the extra rotation this provides is really nice in some of the tighter turns.
Suspension Geometry
Camber, just like at many other circuits, is a matter of compromise.
To achieve the best balance between performance and stability, -2.70 and -1.20 is the way to go.
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For your toe, lower settings give great results through the longer corners, many of which are found in sector 3. Therefore, 0.05 and 0.20 are my recommendations.
Suspension
This track has a fair few lumps and bumps, as well as a couple of fairly nasty kerbs.
One way to deal with these issues is to run a soft suspension setup. However, to get the responsiveness you need to handle the esses in sector 1 you won’t be able to run the minimum suspension settings.
2-6 is my recommendation, but if you feel the car is a little twitchy then try lower the rear suspension stiffness a little.
For the anti-roll bars, a fairly standard setup of 3-9 does the trick. This gives the car good balance between the softer front and the harder rear roll-bars.
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Despite the bumps, I would still recommend attempting to run a ride height as low as 2-4 around here. The performance gained from a lower ride height is greater than most circuits.
If your car isn’t as stable as you’d like, consider raising your ride height above what I’ve recommended.
Brakes
For the brakes, 100% brake pressure with 50% brake balance works really nicely. It gives the car plenty of stopping power without overloading the fronts and causing lockups.
That being said, if you don’t like such high-powered brakes, lowering the pressure won’t do you much harm.
Tyres
The Circuit of the Americas if one of the tracks in F1 that gives you the biggest headache in terms of tyre temperatures.
To cope with the potential to overheat your tyres, lower pressures are the way to go. Specifically, I’ve opted for 22.2psi for your fronts and 20.3psi for your rears.
These are the maximum pressures you should be running. If you find that your tyres are still getting too hot, then lowering these values further is a necessity.
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The AI seem to be uncannily fast through sector 1 of this track, so don’t let it get to you if you can’t keep up there. With this setup, you’ll make up that time and then some during the final two sectors of the lap. It’s there that these settings really shine.
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