You can activate ERS in F1 22 to make it easier to overtake other cars. In this post you can find out exactly how it works and what the bars in the HUD mean.

If you press the overtake button in F1 22, the energy from the battery is made available to your car, which enables additional horsepower. This effectively makes your car faster.

You can not only use the overtake button to overtake, but also to defend yourself, or in qualifying to simply drive a fast lap.

Push-to-Pass System in Formula 1

The KERS (Kinetic Energy Recovery System) was already allowed in the 2009 Formula 1 season and with it the possibility of releasing energy stored during braking at the push of a button and thereby increasing the performance of the car.

Since 2014, the ERS system has been used by all teams, which is no longer limited to the recovery of kinetic energy. A three-part system consisting of MGU-K (Motor Generator Unit - Kinetic), MGU-H (Motor Generator Unit - Heat) and the battery enables the driver to put an additional 160 hp on the road at the touch of a button.

ERS in the F1 Game

Until the F1 2019 game, the ERS was available at six levels. Depending on which level of ERS was used, the battery would also drain faster. These ERS modes existed until 2019:

  • [0] None
  • [1] Low
  • [2] Medium
  • [3] High
  • [4] Overtake
  • [5] Hotlap

Overtake Button since F1 2020

Since F1 2020, the in-game ERS system has been simplified and replaced with a single push-to-pass button ("Overtake"). If you press "Overtake" now, the highest ERS level is automatically activated.

You can use this to drive a fast lap, to defend yourself against other drivers, or to overtake another car more easily. This change took a lot of micromanagement out of the game, which was previously seen in F1 Esports in particular.

ERS in the F1 22 Game

To the left of the current gear in the HUD, you can see everything related to the ERS. The yellow battery shows you how full it is at the moment as a percentage. To the right of it are two bars.

McLaren F1 2021 Race Start in Baku with full ERS battery.
Here, in F1 2021, the ERS is still completely full at the start for this lap, the energy recovered is still at zero.

The top yellow bar in F1 22 has an arrow pointing to the right, indicating that the battery is being drained here. This bar shows you how much longer you can use ERS in this lap. Accordingly, the yellow bar fills again as soon as you cross the start and finish line and empties with ERS use. As soon as the ERS for this round has been used up, the ERS field will be highlighted in red, indicating that the ERS has been used up.

The lower white bar has an arrow pointing to the left, which means that energy is fed into the battery here. This always happens when braking, which is supposed to simulate the MGU-K. Again, there is a limit to how much energy can be recovered in one lap. If the bar is full, you can no longer supply energy to the battery in this lap. For each new lap, this bar resets to zero.

If the overtake button is not activated, the ERS is set to "Medium", when ERS is active it is set to "Overtake" in the HUD.

In a nutshell: The upper bar on the ERS shows how much ERS you can still use in this lap and the lower bar shows you how much energy you can still recover by braking in this lap.

F1 Game