F1 2019 review – sublime motorsports simulation

PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC; Codemasters
Unquestionably the best-looking Formula One game ever, with incredibly convincing car handling - and you don't have to be Lewis Hamilton to play

Formula One fans should be pleased that F1 2019 is arriving with 13 of this season's races yet to happen; back in the day, F1 games customarily arrived at or towards the end of a given season. And a decade since Warwickshire-based developer Codemasters started making video games based on the pinnacle of motorsports, it's fair to say that the studio has cracked it. As with all annual sports games - such as EA Sports' Fifa - each new iteration will only ever bring incremental improvements, but there are some welcome new elements in F1 2019, and the sheer quality of its execution is more evident than ever.

But the biggest addition is Formula One's feeder series, F2. You can play all the way through F2's 2018 season - competing against Lando Norris, Alexander Albon and George Russell, who all entered Formula One this year. Its presence adds a clever intro, with a modicum of narrative thrust, to the headline Career mode: to earn your seat in Formula One, you must complete a truncated version of F2's 2018 season, competing for the title with two other (fictional) drivers, a surprisingly entertaining rivalry that plays out on track and in cutscenes.