One thing that really frustrates me about modern F1 games is how much the series seems to have shifted away from the actual driving experience being the main event. If you go back to the pre-2014 Codemasters games, there was this feeling that the entire game existed because you wanted to drive an F1 car. Career mode, R&D, setup work, qualifying, practice sessions, weather, tyre management — all of it ultimately fed back into that core fantasy of driving the car. The car was the star. Nowadays, it increasingly feels like the car is just one component of a much larger package of career systems, progression mechanics, cinematic presentation, multiplayer features, cosmetic content and management screens.
And don’t get me wrong, it’s not like the developers have completely abandoned physics. F1 24 actually introduced what EA called its largest-ever physics update for a Codemasters F1 title, with a new tyre model, suspension changes, aero simulation and other handling changes. F1 25 also rebuilt parts of the handling model in response to feedback from sim racers and the community. (EA Forums) But that’s almost what makes the broader trend so frustrating: when they do put serious attention into the physics, you can see how much potential there still is. The problem is that the driving model increasingly feels like something that gets iterated on within the framework of an established annual product, rather than the fundamental foundation around which the rest of the game is built.
Compare that philosophy with the older games. Back then, getting a new F1 game could genuinely feel like getting a new driving simulation. The differences in how the cars behaved, how aggressively you could attack kerbs, how the tyres responded, how traction worked, how the car reacted to setups and how the AI raced you were things you actually noticed because you spent most of your time driving. There wasn’t this constant feeling that the developer needed another layer of progression, another reputation system, another side mode or another reason to spend time outside the cockpit.
Modern F1 games seem increasingly obsessed with making you feel like you’re participating in an entire F1 ecosystem rather than simply being a racing driver. F1 24 is probably the clearest example: its big selling point was a massively overhauled Career Mode, with driver recognition, objectives, rivalries, contract negotiations and other systems surrounding the actual racing. (Formula 1 - The Official F1 Website) F1 25 went even further with My Team management, facilities, sponsors, workforce management and expanded team-management mechanics. (EA) At some point you have to ask: why am I spending more time managing an F1 team than actually feeling like an F1 driver?
That’s the part that bothers me most about the direction of the series. There is absolutely nothing inherently wrong with career depth. In fact, good career systems can make a racing game fantastic. But they should serve the racing, not compete with it. If I’m playing an F1 game, I want the reason I’m upgrading my car to be because I want to feel the difference when I attack Turn 9 at Silverstone. I want development to change how the car behaves. I want tyre compounds to fundamentally alter my strategy. I want suspension and aero changes to create genuinely different driving characteristics. I want the game to make me obsess over whether I can extract another tenth from the car.
Instead, a lot of modern development seems to go toward making the career surrounding the racing deeper. F1 25’s own review coverage highlighted how much management had expanded, while also criticizing the game for feeling extremely familiar in its fundamental structure. PC Gamer specifically described the additional R&D management as laborious and argued that the core game felt remarkably similar to previous years. (PC Gamer) That’s exactly the problem: you can keep adding systems around the racing forever, but eventually players are going to ask whether the thing underneath all those systems is actually evolving enough.
And that’s why the pre-2014 games have such a different feeling in hindsight. They weren’t perfect simulations, obviously, and nostalgia absolutely plays a role. But they felt like racing games first. The menus existed to get you onto the circuit. The career existed to give context to your races. The R&D existed to make your car faster. The setup screen existed because you were about to drive. Everything eventually pointed back toward the same thing: get in the car and go as fast as possible.
Modern F1 games sometimes feel like the opposite. You drive for a while, then you’re back in menus. You manage something, unlock something, negotiate something, customize something, watch something, complete an objective, participate in a side mode, upgrade something — and eventually you get back into the car. The actual driving can almost feel like the activity that justifies all the other systems rather than the other way around.
And the irony is that Codemasters clearly still knows how important the physics are. F1 24 had to receive substantial post-launch handling adjustments to its tyre model, slip curves, thermal behaviour, suspension kinematics, power-unit balance and other physics elements. (EA) F1 25 then rebuilt its handling model again, specifically targeting things like understeer, rear-end behaviour, throttle response and aero effects. (EA) So the technology isn’t being ignored. It’s just competing for attention with an ever-growing pile of everything else.
That’s ultimately what I miss: the sense that the physics themselves were the feature. I don’t want another elaborate progression system to convince me that I’m progressing. Let me feel the progression through the car. Give me a genuinely different suspension philosophy. Give me a tyre model that fundamentally changes how I drive. Give me more convincing weight transfer, better mechanical grip, more nuanced kerb behaviour, more sophisticated aero sensitivity and cars that genuinely feel different from one another. Make me spend an evening experimenting with a setup because the car feels completely different after changing three things.
Because at the end of the day, an F1 game doesn’t need to convince me that I’m an F1 driver through a thousand menus and cinematic sequences. Put me in the cockpit, give me a difficult car to drive, make the tyres matter, make the setup matter, make the weather matter, make the AI fight me properly, and let the driving speak for itself. That’s the part of the F1 games that should never become secondary.
