The 21st Century has seen the longest stretches of team domination in the history of Formula 1. The last 14 years has seen drivers from just two teams win the whole shebang. That’s year after year, for nearly a decade and a half.
Yes, Formula 1 is foremost an engineering series, and the recipe for winning a World Drivers' Championship essentially begins with “have the quickest car” and ends with “be faster than your teammate.” Yes, there’s a glimmer of promise this year with four different winners in just eight Grands Prix. However, broadly speaking, the predictability of F1 is getting a little old hat.
Unfortunately, Codemasters’ F1 series is suffering a parallel predictability problem in F1 24, in that it’s a terrific racing game but, despite its well-executed new career mode and flattering handling model, it’s mostly an extremely familiar experience. F1 24’s new hook is the ability to “be one of the 20,” as Codemasters puts it. This means we can now take one of F1’s superstar drivers and play as them in a complete, multi-season career mode experience called Driver Career.
It’s essentially an adjacent mode to My Team, the team owner-driver mode added in F1 2020 – which still exists, unchanged, in F1 24. Driver Career isn’t actually limited to the 20 current top F1 drivers – you can also select an F2 driver, create a custom driver, choose from a selection of past F1 legends, or race as Pastor Maldonado. Driver Career is mostly distinct for w.
