F1 2018 by Codemasters: The RaceFans review
F1 review Posted on
17th August 2018, 11:43 | Written by Will Wood

It’s difficult to believe that, as F1 2018 arrives, almost a decade has passed since Codemasters landed the rights to the official Formula 1 game series.

And as Formula One’s factories remain shut down for the summer break, what better way is there to fill the racing void than by sinking your teeth into this year’s edition of the official F1 game?

By building on the qualities of last year’s impressive iteration, F1 2018 succeeds in offering the most comprehensive and refined official title yet.
Hitting the track
Let’s address the most important question on everyone’s mind straight away – Halo does not ruin the cockpit view.

If you’re a seasoned cockpit view racer, it will certainly be a shock to the system the first time you rumble down the Albert Park pit lane with a large carbon fibre protrusion in your vision.

Thankfully, other than when you’re driving down a long straight, it’s very easy to ignore the frontal column of the Halo and you’ll still be able to hit your apexes with equal precision to before.

But even if that’s still too much of an obstruction, Codemasters have included an option to gracefully remove the frontal column completely, making the cockpit view experience practically identical to before.

It’s only a very minor factor in the grand scheme of things as F1 2018 provides an enhanced experience over last year.


Liberty Media’s influence over TV broadcasts in 2018 has been striking, but Formula One’s rebranding surprisingly hasn’t revolutionised the virtual world.

Bryan Tyler’s stirring new theme music is present, as is the sport’s new logo. But besides from those elements, the game’s presentation, menu system and UI remains fundamentally unchanged from last year’s edition.

One neat touch is that FOM’s new team radio sting plays every time you receive or send a radio message while in the track.

It’s not a full simulation, but F1 2018’s handling model is both challenging and rewarding. The current high-downforce generation machines offer fantastic corner grip and the game provides the player with a great feeling for the cars, even through a gamepad.

Balancing the modern cars through high speed sweepers is a lot of fun. Turn off the driving assistance and you can quickly get a good feel for where the adhesion limits are under acceleration and braking.

Tyre and brake temperatures now theoretically play a greater role in car performance over a single lap. So just as the real drivers often have to run cool down laps in qualifying, you might find that running two consecutive hot-laps will not be an option at times.


The big new on-track feature this season is that the player now has full control over ERS deployment. Using a one-to-five scale, you can now strategise how much you want to ask of your ERS at any given moment on circuit.

Quicker than a rival in the final sector? Save your hybrid energy up over the first half of the lap and then whack it up to ‘overtake’ mode for a better run into that crucial final overtaking opportunity. Need to fend off a faster car? Deploying your energy wisely can help you frustrate your opponent.

If it sounds like too much to manage, you can set your deployment to ‘auto’ and not worry about it. But just as in real life, your engineer will regularly prompt you to adjust into a more suitable setting should your battery become overcharged or if you could do with a little more harvesting.

Since its return in 2016, the career mode has proven to be the most immersive and rewarding aspect of Codemasters’ series and this year’s mode is deeper and more enjoyable than ever.
Series veterans will be familiar with how the career mode works as it operates in much the same way as in 2017. Choose a team, choose a team mate, set all the race options to your heart’s content and settle in for a long season of practice programmes, position targets and car development.

This season, you’ll now have to face the media whenever you do something worthy of acclaim or blame. Journalist Claire will occasionally put questions to you after sessions in the form of an RPG-style timed dialogue choice system and your answers actually do matter. Choose your words carelessly and you may find they have an impact on your team.

If you blame missing out on Q2 because of poor downforce, your team’s morale will suffer and future aero upgrades will become more expensive and take longer to produce. But credit a breakthrough result down to your new power unit upgrades, your engine guys will get a boost, making it easier and cheaper to improve your car’s power plant further on in the game.

Your responses also help to shape whether your driver is a ‘sportsman’ or a ‘showman’ and that can affect how attractive you are to each of the 10 teams when it’s time to negotiate contracts.

What you say to the media could hurt or help your career
If you always offer professional but uninspired answers to questions, your chances of being offered a seat at Red Bull are likely to suffer. Show some fire and maybe a hint of arrogance in your media responses, however, and if your results are good enough you might just find that Christian Horner will be more open to contract discussions.
And contract negotiations are themselves another new feature this year and possibly the most interesting of the additions to career mode.

You’ll start off in whichever team you choose as a number two driver with low expectations and respect to match, but after every four races you’ll get a chance to review your position in the team.

You can negotiate your qualifying and race targets, your standing against your team mate and extra bonuses like faster upgrade times or resource point multipliers. It’s all dependent on the respect you’ve earned on the track. The better you do, the more the team will be willing to offer to invest in you.

Set harder targets and you can stand to earn greater respect if you hit them. Fail to live up to them and the team will be more hesitant to offer you as many perks in the future.

It’s a relatively simple system that offers players far greater freedom to set the career mode targets that are suitable for them and also reflects the fickle nature of the sport. If you’re coming off a hot streak of strong race finishes, you can use that to barter a better contract position, but if you then disappoint, all those early successes will count for little.
It also makes switching teams mid-season a more viable option than ever. You can more realistically make a Sainz-to-Renault move to a new team in the middle of a campaign than previously, but you risk ending up in a worse position long term if your new team hasn’t invested in its R&D as wisely as you had with your old team.

With racing against the AI still as exciting as ever, F1 2018’s career mode is easily the most immersive single-player experience ever conceived in an officially licensed F1 game. Managing the media, team expectations and your limited components throughout a long 21 race season makes every single session feel like it matters. Even that hefty practice shunt in Monaco could come back to haunt you in the closing stages of a tight season.

Aside from the current championship, there’s plenty of additional content to keep you entertained. Last year’s version saw the welcome return of classic cars to the series and it’s great to see older legendary machines from the seventies and eighties like the McLaren M23, Ferrari 312T and Lotus 79 join the fray in their own category.
Like the existing classics, the new additions don’t quite handle as convincingly as some might hope, but they are accessible enough to give casual fans a decent idea of what it must have been like to be a Formula One driver in such a glorious era.

Disappointingly, the two new classic cars likely to excite players the most – the Williams FW25 and Brawn GP BGP 001 – are confined to the Headline Edition of the game or a future DLC release.

You can race classics online as well as against the AI with the option to run a multi-class race with all three eras of classics on track at the same time, making for a truly unique experience for a Formula One game.

The championships mode from last season returns to offer multiple short championships based on themes ranging from a street circuit series to wet weather races or a double-header series with a sprint and feature race with reverse grids. They add a novel variety to the game and whichever team you choose you will receive a target position relative to their performance, making it a fun way to try out all the cars on offer in meaningful competition.

Multiplayer is the main focus of many players and many will be pleased to hear that a new Super Licence system will hopefully help to improve matchmaking by putting safer and fairer drivers together in ranked races and avoiding having your races ruined by oblivious rivals or trolls.

As much as there is to do in F1 2018 and as immersive as it can be, there are moments when it will feel a little too familiar to long time players of the series.

It’s a little disappointing to see the exact same pre-session garage animations and victory animations from team principals recycled from the last two editions. David Croft will also describe how your chosen track “eats rear tyres for breakfast” on what feels like every circuit you visit – again, just as he did last year.

The classic cars could use some classic tracks
It’s odd when discussing a racing game that boasts 25 tracks to say that circuit variety could be improved. But a racing game of this quality feels like it’s crying out for a ridiculous fantasy bonus track akin to those you’d find in Psygnosis’ games on the original PlayStation. Or at the least, some of the classic tracks that featured in F1 2013 to complement the plethora of classic cars on offer.
As ever, there’s a sense that the greatest limitation of Codemasters’ series remains the very licence itself. Unless Liberty Media prove more flexible than their predecessors the next time the sport’s official game licence is up for renewal, features like driver transfers, junior formula, livery editing or even creating an entirely new team will remain only dreams.

If you’ve never played a Codemasters F1 game or if you or someone you know has even a casual interest in the sport, it’s never been easier to recommend a Formula One game than it is with F1 2018.

Experienced players may feel a growing sense of deja vu once the new game sheen begins to wear off while hardcore sim racing fans will still find frustrations in the details. However, when you’re locked into a 100 percent distance career mode race and a sudden safety car deployment forces you into a last minute strategy call that ultimately nets you a surprise maiden podium, it’s a reminder that Formula One games have never been as immersive and exhilarating as they are right now.

F1 2018 is not only Codemasters’ best edition of the series to date, it reaffirms it as one of the best sports game franchises on the market.

I thought oli was doing a thread!

Sorry.

I’d love to have the time to give this a go, used to long for a decent f1 game. Just can’t be bothered with it right now. Maybe grab it in a sale at some point.

Onto Bahrain GP after an unexpected 3rd place finish in Australia (lots of top runners didnt finish).

Qualified 10th for the GP, my teammate is in 8th. I had two bad qually runs, neither was clear and free of mistakes.

Good news is that i got through Q2 on the (S) and only Bottas on the grid ahead of me and Perez/Ocon/Eriksson vehind are starting on the (S).

That should in theory save me one pitstop.

Its lights out time, smoke me a kipper I'll be back for breakfast.....

Well 2 out of 3 upgrades arrived. Weight Reduction of the floor and Front Wing main flap. Bloody crankshaft part for the engine failed, typical mclaren. That will be another few weeks to get redeveloped. Sigh.

You're making me want to buy it.

Dino playing F1 > Actual F1

Damn, that was a tough race. Started P18, went with a one stop strategy hoping to make P10 by the end of the race. 9 laps into the race i was running P3, only through the fact that Gasly P4 and I hadn't pitted yet. My pit window was lap 12 and expected position after the pitstop would be P16.

Then a stroke of unbelievable luck, SAFTEY CAR. Music to my ears. Engineer came on radio offering an alternative strategy, basically come in this lap for the Medium tyre. 21 laps on a Medium tyre? Can i pull that off or should i wait for my normal pit window?

I didn't have long to decide, i let the team know im coming in and took the punt. I re-emerged in P7. Wow, 9 places up because of the saftey car. Now i had to nurse my tyres round for 21 laps.

Due to a number of cars stopping for their 2nd pitstop i found myself in P1 for a lap or two. It didnt last, the ferraris, mercedes and red bulls came flying past on the straights and i found myself in P7 trying to battle P6 off of Riccardo who had a damaged RedBull according to my engineer.

I tried my hardest, but it was a losing battle, engineer told me that the brakes were getting too hot and i needed to back off. Screw him i thought and kept the pressure on. Riccardo dropped it on turn 2 and lost the backend, straight into the wall he went. I was now P6. Only a few laps to go, but my front left tyre was 75% degraded and dangerously close to a puncture, all because of the battle with Riccardo, i should have been sensible and let him go. I lined up an emergency pitstop with a set of Supersofts just in case.

Two laps to go, Magnesson was closing in at an alarming rate, id been told to fuel save to get to the end of the race (turn the engine down) and id also been told there was wear and tear on the engine (resulting in less HP) and wear on the electronic motor. Shit.

One lap to go, front left is in the 80's, it could go at any time, Magnesson is closing in, but its alittle too late, i nurse the car home in P6. Unbelievable result.

Damn you Dino. I've gone and bought it.

Birdorf wrote:

I suppose this is still priced at 55 quid on PS4. It annoys me slightly that Codemasters don’t put a more sensible digital price on this. It wouldn’t be so bad if they didn’t knock it down to 30 after a few weeks.

They should have launched onrush at £30 .. might have stood a chance

This is their premium product though and the licence can’t be cheap and presumably the die heads are in day one

What difficulty and assists are you running Dino?

Yeah, I'm enjoying what little I've played. I've got the difficulty at 90 at the moment but that's too high. I'm OK in the corners and can stick with other cars, but on the straight I am left for dead, and can't put in a competitive time at all. I will adjust it down after the first race I think.

Mclaren, same as you. Is there anything you change in your setup routinely from the default to help you out?

I’m getting on the hype train guys sounds like codies have nailed it

Dino how is the ai? Do they pit correctly? Do they run a sensible strategy? How is quart? How do they run if it turns wet?

Cheers Dino, I'll give it a try.

Qualy .. stupid spelling correct

On the first codies f1 if you qualified well and let the clock tick down you’d be ok .. if you skipped to the end of the session you’d find the ai had all pumped in
Amazing laps