After roughly 940 million kilometres, the Earth has reached the point on its 12-month celestial march around the sun where it’s time for another Formula 1 game. Fitting, perhaps, considering I feel like I’ve driven roughly 940 million kilometres in this series over the past decade-and-change. Jokes aside, it’s a testament to the incredible robustness of Codemasters’ brand of open-wheel motorsport magic that climbing back into the cockpit each year remains a pleasure, and F1 23 is no exception. Alongside noticeably improved handling for the new-era cars, F1 23 also adds the next chapter of the Braking Point story mode introduced in F1 2021 – plus a new reward-based progression system with daily, weekly, and seasonal goals. The result is plenty to keep us busy, even if your personal mileage may vary substantially depending on your taste in both curated, solo campaigns and live service-style game modes.
Last season’s sweeping regulation changes ushered in a field full of brand-new F1 cars, and with their bigger wheels and tyres they were the best-looking cars the sport had seen in some time. However, they were also the heaviest cars in the championship’s history. In F1 22 this translated to a model that made manhandling that additional bulk quite tricky. Relearning the limits of these new cars was admittedly an absorbing challenge, but it wasn’t always a fun one; there was definitely a fickleness to the way the cars had a tendency to both understeer coming into corners and oversteer while trying to throttle out of them.
In F1 23, driveability has improved dramatically. There’s still a sensation of bulk here in the hefty new-era cars, but they feel considerably more cooperative; grippier and more stable, especially clipping
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