The 10 best F1 games of all time | FOS Future Lab

F1 – Sega Mega Drive

Believe it or not there was a time where a perfectly rendered Grand Prix circuit wasn’t achievable on a video game. Instead you had an extremely pixelated version of a basic version of the F1 calendar. The track undulated, and you even went under bridges and through tunnels at Monaco. In fact the bridges and tunnels seemed to bear no relation to the actual circuits themselves, and the backdrops leave a lot more to be desired by today’s standards. But these were the standards of the early 1990s. F1 gave the gamer the very best experience possible and was one of the first F1 console games to truly capture the sheer speed of the pinnacle of motorsport.

Formula One Grand Prix – PC

You can’t have a list of the greatest F1 games ever without having something from Geoff Crammond on the list. Despite not being much of a motorsport fan at the start of his programming career, the former systems engineer for the defence industry tried his hand at developing a Formula 3 game in 1984 and the rest is history. Seven years later MicroProse released his first game based on Formula 1, and it was an instant hit. Despite lacking any official licensing, the game featured groundbreaking physics, thanks in no small part to Crammond’s degree in the subject, and also featured accurately modeled circuits, meaning racers could actually identify their location on track. Such was the success of F1GP that it spawned three sequels, all with official licensing, and by the mid-’90s was still being regarded as one of the greatest PC games of all time.

Grand Prix World – PC

Sticking with MicroProse comes a game that recently featured on our list of the greatest racing simulators available. While not a traditional F1 game in terms of sticking you behind the wheel, Grand Prix World was the last, and most polished, of the Grand Prix Manager series. The series saw MicroProse and F1 cashing in on the hugely popular management sim genre, which still enjoys huge popularity in the football market today, and Grand Prix World was just as detailed as Football Manager is today. It wasn’t simply a case of setting a strategy and hoping for the best, you had to very carefully assign your budgets across the departments. Do you put your backing behind a strong R&D programme (which could be for nought if another team protested your new parts), or do you splash the cash on signing a big name like Schumacher, Hakkinen, Newey or Brawn? Yes, you even had to sign technical directors. There are few F1 games that bring a greater sense of achievement than bringing Minardi up from the back of the grid to being a fully works-backed squad fighting for the title.

Grand Prix Legends - PC

Another game out of left field in that this one probably doesn’t cater for the casual F1 fan. Produced by Papyrus, who were most well known for their incredibly realistic NASCAR and IndyCar sims, the game delved into the history books and produced a game centred around the 1967 season – inspired by the film Grand Prix. No downforce, no slick tyres, no run-off. This game perfectly captured the difficulty of racing in the late ‘60s, and still holds up today. Many an avid sim racer still logs hundreds of hours on this game a year, and the popularity shows. An all-new demo version of the game, thanks to the modding community, was released at the start of 2020 to entice those who aren’t sure whether they want to part with their hard-earned money on a 22-year-old game. The answer should be an easy yes, as the same modding community have also expanded the game extensively to include Formula 2 cars and even Can-Am.

Formula 1 97 - PlayStation

This game recently made it into our list of the greatest racing games of all time, so of course it makes it into this. Formula 1 97 was the second game in Sony’s Formula 1 series, and featured the dulcet tones of everyone’s favourite commentator, Murray Walker. Featuring every driver and team from the 1997 season – barring Jacques Villeneuve – this game was the perfect hybrid for an F1 game. You could choose either “Arcade” or “Grand Prix” mode, depending on what level of realism you were hoping for, with the latter giving you the full Championship experience with the challenge of fuel load, tyre wear and the loss of front wings to contend with. It’s that cross section of realism and pick-up-and-playability that makes the perfect F1 game, and this was one of the first to truly fit that formula.

F1 Career Challenge - PC/PlayStation/Xbox/Gamecube

The early 2000s was a fantastic time period for the gaming F1 fan. While Sony was continuing with its series that had started in 1996, sports gaming powerhouse EA Sports joined the scene in 2000 with the imaginatively titled F1 2000. An exclusivity deal between FOM, FOCA and Sony from 2003 onwards meant that EA had to stop at the end of 2002. Rather than just end it there, EA Sports decided to create a new game, focussed on the seasons they had previously licensed. That meant that four seasons were now playable instead of just the one, something unheard of in previous F1 games. Not only would teams and drivers change across the years, but small adjustments were made to the tracks to provide a more authentic time progression feel, and gave F1 fans their first true taste of a Career Mode format, something later games would push further and further.

F1 2013 - PC, Xbox 360, PS3

Codemasters have been building F1 games for 11 years now, and it's pretty safe to say they’ve absolutely nailed it with their recent offerings. Not that that was always the case, however, and you could certainly call the series a rollercoaster of quality. F1 2013 was the follow-up to a rather lacklustre F1 2012. There wasn’t much wrong with the previous offering, it was just a bit… well, boring. Codies pulled it out of the bag for the sequel, giving F1 fans their first opportunity at driving cars and tracks from yesteryear. Largely focussed on the late ‘80s, if you didn’t want the sound of screaming V8s, something many would be desperate to hear again these days, you could swap out for the growling DFV. They even threw in a filter and custom graphics to enhance the classic car experience, a nice touch that many appreciated. The classic cars were a welcome addition, and provided a break from the annoying, yet very accurate, extremely high tyre wear from the 2013 cars.

F1 2019 - PC, Xbox One, PS4

Having spent a decade making Formula 1 games, Codemasters started looking at ways they could expand their video game offerings while still remaining a fully licenced game. With Career Mode consistently being a firm fan favourite, the game added an unbelievably popular new category in 2019: Formula 2. In the past you started your career from one of the lower teams on the F1 grid, but now you would join one of the F2 teams for a (shortened) feeder series season before being offered slots in the main event. The team you chose affected who offered you a seat the following year. Do you go for one of the Junior Programmes such as Mercedes or Ferrari, thus opening up spots at Williams or Alfa Romeo respectively, or do you go without the programme and just prove your worth to all and sundry? It also tried to add a little drama by creating two fictional characters during your F2 season, who would also make the step up to F1 with you, signing for rival teams to add a little extra spice to your debut year.

This was also the first game to feature driver transfers, much like a FIFA Career Mode, another element of the game fans had been crying out for. For the first time ever you could see Lewis Hamilton in the scarlet Prancing Horse, or, as happened in this writer’s game, a dream squad of Max Verstappen and Charles Leclerc at Red Bull.

F1 2020 – PC, Xbox One, PS4

The latest edition from Codemasters F1 2020 unsurprisingly makes it on the list as you would imagine that the most recent game with the most up-to-date tech is a shoo-in. That’s not always the case, but the features included in this game more than make it relevant as one of the best F1 offerings on the market. Expanding from F1 2019’s hugely popular decision to include F2 cars (which provided a much better racing experience than the F1 cars), Codemasters added in a new, and much welcomed feature called “My Team”. Here you created your own 12^th team to join the F1 entry list. You chose who to purchase engine from, and of course the higher the price, the better the engine. But splash out on your engine and you lose money for your second driver, who you originally pick from the 2019 Formula 2 entry list. Starting at the bottom, you would then have to utilise the R&D, which has become a hugely expanded part of Codemasters’ career modes after the last few years, to try and work your way up and see your team go from back row minnows to World Constructors Champions.

F1 Race Stars – PC, PS3, Xbox 360

It’s not all perfectly simulated experiences in the world of F1 gaming. In 2012 Codemasters decided to release a Mario Kart-esque game to their repertoire alongside their sim-heavy series. Featuring every car and driver from the 2012 season, plus two additional fictional teams with female drivers, players competed on tracks loosely based on the real life circuits for their countries. For example, Silverstone only really features a cartoon version of the start finish straight, before the cars head down a British village and get snapped by a speed camera before heading through a car factory – a nod to the number of teams based close by. Finally the cars race across a working airfield, another reference to Silverstone’s past, before rejoining the circuit and starting over again. Other examples include the Ferrari Rossa roller coaster on the Abu Dhabi track and driving across an American Football field at Austin. With a mixture of power-ups and weapons, much like the other kart racers it was based on, this was definitely one for the casual gamer, and the younger generation. Any of the more serious F1 fans saying it was a waste of time are just kidding themselves. It was a lot of fun.

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