To drive F1 22’s new cars, first, give yourself a break

polygon.com:

Eventually, it just worked.

The engine didn’t change. The torque through the rear axle didn’t change. The clutch pedal, tighter than an eight-day clock, sure didn’t change. I don’t feel like I changed, either. But in the spring of 1990 I finally figured out how to operate my mother’s manual transmission BMW 325e. I went from being unable to get the thing to move without stalling out to cruising around Kiawah Island with my brother, no questions asked.

The same sort of experience awaits you in F1 22, even if — maybe especially if — you’re a series veteran with thousands of miles in track time. The new cars, as is the case in the real-life vehicles they emulate, have an unavoidable learning curve, and the AI drivers are much stronger, especially as they aren’t the ones learning on the job. When I reviewed F1 22 two weeks ago, I felt there was no avoiding the traction control assist for gamepad users. My car was spinning out on the slightest acceleration using the same control-and-assist regime as last year’s game.

Well, lo and behold, just like that spring in South Carolina, something finally clicked for me; I can race F1 22’s sleek new models on a gamepad without traction control after all, which means I can run faster and tick the AI difficulty up four or five spots. Lee Mather, Codemasters’ creative director, said I am not the only one making these breakthroughs.

“Something which we very commonly see is, there’s a placebo effect, when we put a patch out, people think we’ve changed things that we’ve gone nowhere near,” Mather said. “We’ve already seen feedback from the patch that’s gone live [on July 7], relating to things that we’ve not been anywhere near.”

In simpler terms, two weeks into F1 22’s launch, folks are