F1® 2021

I've spent a good chunk of time with F1 2021 and the honest truth is that it lands in a really comfortable place on the simcade spectrum. It is not iRacing or Assetto Corsa - the physics lean toward accessible rather than punishing - but strip out the assists, turn off traction control and the DRS Overtake button energy management becomes a genuine mental workout on top of monitoring fuel load and tyre degradation every single lap. The handling model was reportedly tweaked with input from real drivers and it shows: the cars feel like they have too much power for the road, which is exactly the sensation you want. Wheel users get a solid experience, though early reports flagged a force feedback firmware bug specifically on Thrustmaster hardware that required a workaround at launch, so check that patch history before plugging in your rig. The mode lineup is the strongest the series had seen up to this point. Braking Point is the headline act - a cinematic story mode following rookie Aiden Jackson, veteran Casper Akkerman and the reliably irritating Devon Butler across two seasons, told through voiced cutscenes, radio chatter, emails and even fictional social media posts. It runs around five to six hours, which makes it a good weekend session rather than a full commitment. The narrative is unashamedly soap opera, inspired by the Drive to Survive school of drama, and it works better than it has any right to for a sports game. It is also a genuinely useful onboarding ramp for newcomers - the chapter structure eases you into race weekends without throwing you into a full 23-race season on your first evening. Braking Point is a bit light on player choice and the time-skips between chapters can feel abrupt, but as a first attempt at a story mode for this franchise it sets a decent foundation. Outside of Braking Point, My Team returns as the mode that will eat your free time. You build an 11th constructor from scratch, hire a second driver, manage sponsorship deals, allocate R&D points across your car and deal with the press after every race weekend. The resource system was rebalanced from F1 2020 to give players control over how fast their team rises, which means careers can feel genuinely different run to run. On top of that, two-player Career mode lets you run a full season alongside a friend as teammates or rivals - a feature the series badly needed and one that is a lot of fun if you have a regular co-op partner. Real-Season Start lets you drop into the 2021 championship at any point with real standings intact, which is a clever option if you come to the game mid-season or just want a specific circuit. Split-screen is also present, and online has casual and ranked lobbies plus a full league organiser for groups who want to run their own championship. Fair warning: online connectivity had notable problems at launch - crashes, disconnections, server instability - and while patches addressed a lot of it, online league play had a rough first few months. On the accessibility side, this is one of the better-tuned sports sims for mixed-skill groups. A full suite of driving assists can be toggled individually, and a beginner-friendly multiplayer section keeps cars ghosted to avoid pile-ups from new players. The AI difficulty slider is granular and the Expert race style gives sim-heads plenty of settings to chase. The one gap is a noticeable jump between the two middle difficulty settings - the sweet spot for intermediate players can take a bit of tuning to find. Classic cars were removed in this entry, which will annoy veterans, and a handful of 2021 tracks including Imola, Portimao and Jeddah were absent at launch before arriving as free post-launch updates. That is something to keep in mind if you are shopping for a complete experience. For anyone asking whether this is a good entry point to the F1 series, the answer is yes. For casual players who just want to hold the throttle and look fast, the assist options deliver that. For the group who wants to run a full season with manual pit strategies, tyre compound selection and driver contract negotiations, that is all here too. It is a sports title that genuinely caters for four friends of different skill levels on the same couch - or online - which is exactly what I want to see from a game in this lane.

Riley · Scout Team

Sports & racing

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