Pro Season mode in F1 2015 may look scary for players with no previous experience with manual gearbox. It's not really easy if you are like me and have never tried it before. But it's not that hard, though it will take some time to get used to it just well enough to complete these achievements.

Also, I found out that getting these achievements is a bit harder thanks to numerous bugs which may make the whole experience frustrating and it can get a little bit confusing too. Considering I couldn't find some bugs on the internet in forums from 2015, they may be new from some patches and nobody realised it or found out and didn't share it as he found a workaround.

If you don't have a wheel, I recommend playing on controller, but I played and finished all achievements on a keyboard (and not that great one, to be honest).

Order of these achievements is not fixed, it's just my recommendation coming from my experience.

There are 3 achievements for Pro Season mode, they all come with some bugs attached, so at first I'll present you a quick description of each of them

(Finish a Pro Season race)

Be careful as it is not as easy as it looks. As discussed here (https://forum.psnprofiles.com/topic/29463-hard-times/), it looks like you cannot pause (or save) during the race itself.

At first, I tried Canada with saving and reloading after getting penalties, I finished with 0 penalties, 6 laps from a leader and the achievement did not count. Then I did a whole Silverstone weekend without entering Pause Menu (fast-forwarding through Practice sessions and Q1, which took around 25-30 minutes and then finishing the race), I also tried to get one lap in during Q1 and right after the Turn 3 I spun out and got blackflagged, I then restarted the session and fast-forwarded through it. I finished with 6 penalties, 5 laps after the leader with 5 pits and it counted.

All that means that you have to be determined to get the achievement and find around 2 hour window to not get disturbed and finish it.

(Finish 78 laps in Monaco in Pro Season)

All practice sessions and qualifying sessions count towards the achievement. But, I found it to be quite buggy (at one point I had 47 laps and after quitting the game, I had 35). It seems that what is counting towards the achievement is the total laps during the weekend. If you save and reload back a few practice laps, the progress didn't seem to move until I made those few laps back. When you crash, restart the session and load to pre-crash state, it seems to mess up the count entirely. So be aware.

(Finish in top 16 in qualifying in Pro Season)

You need to get to Q2 (in 2015 season it's Top 15).

But, for the qualifying in Pro season mode I found that something was wrong. I found out that it's confusing which laps count towards the qualifying time and it looks like just the first fast lap out of the pits counts (I had 2 clean quicker laps after the first and they didn't count).

Also, you'd likely want to post just one time and then just retire (it seems like the simulation does just one lap for each driver this way, if you keep playing and try the second lap, so will each driver and their second laps tend to be faster).

At first try getting into Q2, I recommend either getting really good at Australia (which I'm not) or retire from every session until Canada/Austria combo (skip Monaco for now).

Australia is first in the calendar and it will take less time learning just one track and restarting it for this achievement, also you can just finish the race here and not waste time retiring.

But, Australia is a bit longer and twisty track and may take a lot of time to perfect. I am not that good at Australia, so I tried to found another track and the easiest is probably Monza (12th race of the season). Shorter tracks are easier to learn and on the faster tracks, you'll get advantage (as you'll most likely be driving Mercedes).

Canada/Austria combo are 7th and 8th respectively on the calendar and should be easy enough to start learning the ropes of Pro Season with manual gearbox and without assists. If you have real trouble learning the manual gearbox, remember that the car is stable enough around 4th-5th gear, where you'll stop oversteering just when tapping the throttle. In my fastest attempts, where I qualified into Q2, I never went lower than 4th gear.

There are some guides which provide the optimal setup for a flying lap for given track, you can save the setup for this track and familiarize yourself with this setup right from the start.

When you feel confident enough, try qualifying. Save before the quick lap starts and right after every minor mistake, then load and try that section again. It takes some time to do, but when you do it for the first time, it'll just be easier the next time. Remember, you want to do just one flying lap and then retire from the session. Then, the limit to get to Q2 will be the lowest (as NPCs don't seem to do a second try, which is usually faster).

After the first successful qualifying, you are ready for Monaco (if you are in Canada, try Austria qualifying next, if not, then just start a new Pro Season and retire from every session until Monaco).

I think this is great time to try Monaco as you could still need some practice with manual gearbox, but you should be able to not destroy the car completely all the time.

As I said earlier, I strongly suspect there may be something messing up the progress for the achievement and I think it's when you destroy the car, restart the session and load from before the crash. I cannot prove it and you may find it to work for you, but it didn't for me, it started working when I stopped destroying the car and started to be careful.

The whole track is again possible to do at 4th gear, which would be stable enough to not oversteer each time you tap throttle. Inlaps and outlaps do not count, so maybe try to load as much fuel as possible and carefully go around the track. If you damage your front wing, you can again save and load just before the incident, but try to not destroy your car completely as I suspect it may mess up the progress on the laps.

You can use all practice sessions for this achievement (if you feel like you've done enough laps and destroy the car, you can continue to another session). They don't have to be clean laps, you can cut corners and go off the track a bit. In qualifying, you can do around 7 more laps and finish the rest in the race. I recommend at least trying to do all laps in one GP weekend, but the laps shouldn't be reset if you left Monaco and tried another time.

You can also try the other guides' way here and in Q1 try to make a chaos and crash to everyone and save after, maybe you'll find it easier. I just found it frustrating and it may take just about same amount of time to perfect crashing into someone than to piece up a quality Q1 time on another, quicker and easier, track (especially if you learned to drive for 78 laps and now you'll be learning to crash into everyone before their first attempt in Q1 and before getting DQ'd).

Also, maybe after some updates and patches, but it looks like the AI drivers have steel cars that do not break even if I T-bone them. Maybe they were trying to fix this approach. Maybe you can just drive them out on their first flying lap (at least 5 of them and you'll easily get a penalty for this) and them drive one flying clean lap and retire right away? It might work, but I find it super risky and wasting time if you've already learned to drive at least passably.

After finishing in Monaco, it's time to clean up the Easier Than Expected achievements. If you learned Australia, it's pretty simple: Start a new Pro Season, qualify and repeat.

If you learned some of the easier tracks (Canada, Austria, Italy...), continue from Monaco and try to qualify there. I found out it takes like 20 minutes to retire from every session from the beginning of the season until Canada, so I learned Austria as well, so I don't have to do it 5 times. I finished the achievement in Monza, Italy and found this track to be by far the easiest with the quickest car. I even managed to qualify into Q3 there.

Remember that a correct setup may save you some time, find the guide and save the quickest setup for the track you're on, it may make the whole process a lot easier, especially when fighting for every tenth.

After you finished these two achievements, you shoud be skilled enough to try your hardest challenge (or at least the hardest challenge for me), conveniently named Hard Times.

As I said earlier, I tried this in Canada after my first Q2 appearance with saving and reloading and after finishing the race, the achievement did not count. The safest way is to find about 2 hour time window for yourself and do the whole weekend without entering Pause Menu - Accelerate Time through Practice Sessions and Q1 (it takes around 30 minutes to just sit there and wait).

At this point, you should be skilled enough to not wreck your car and not get disqualified. I accumulated 6 penalties with multiple warnings for corner cutting, but I don't think I was that far off from getting DQ'd. Remember, you cannot see Race Director about penalties and warnings, so just try to drive as clean as possible.

For this achievement, I chose Silverstone (as it was on the way - I did it before finishing Easier Than Expected). Spa seems to take the least amount of time (around 80 mins total). Shorter tracks have more laps (e.g. Canada has 70) and they last about 8-9 minutes more in total time, it tends to get really repetitive here.

I recommend the racing track (not street circuit) of medium length to not get bored and with enough runoff area that it wouldn't be too easy to wreck your car. Australia may be good as well.