F1 24 preview – a year of change

The final piece of the handling jigsaw is an increased emphasis on chassis ride height. This is another critical factor for the real-world cars in this ground effect phase of their design rules, as tiny changes in ride height can massively affect their aerodynamic performance.

Codemasters has also revamped one other element that feeds into the cars’ general performance: the ERS (Energy Recovery System). Essentially, that’s energy recovered under braking and the like, which can then be deployed by the driver. Codemasters said that the changes to the ERS model will give players much more control over deploying ERS boosts, and that all ERS modes will now be available in the game in all sessions.

There’s an element of risk in making so many fundamental changes to the models that underpin the cars’ basic physics – one of which is that making the cars behave much more like they do in real-life could make them harder to drive than they have been in previous games, which could prove intimidating for more casual players.

However, Codemasters has an exemplary track record of both balancing the cars in their F1 games and catering for those whose driving skills aren’t so practised. At the time of the preview presentation, a closed beta of the game had been running, in which some anomalous handling characteristics had been reported. Mather and Ringley said that was due to some incorrect data having been plugged into the new systems, which had since been identified and corrected.

By the time it releases, F1 24 will have been through a huge testing programme to iron out such kinks, and Codemasters’ track record suggests that they will get it right for launch. If they do, we can expect F1 24’s cars to feel more responsive, alive, and affected by track conditions than any previous iteration of the game, which is an exciting prospect for Formula One fans.

Mather next highlighted F1 24’s career mode, as another key area of the game which has received a major overhaul, stating that the last time Codemasters embarked on such a comprehensive revamp of an F1 game’s career mode was in 2016. He said that in F1 24’s career mode, you will be able to ‘Play your way.’

The most obvious major change to the career mode is that as well as playing as yourself, you will now be able to play as any of the current drivers in both F1 and F2. If you want, you’ll be able to start off as an F2 driver (taking part in last season’s F2 championship before joining this year’s F1 grid).

One consequence, Mather said, of allowing you to play as real-life F1 drivers is that the game’s system of driver ratings becomes vastly more important and has been reworked accordingly. As before, your driver rating depends on how you do in the game’s rivalries and against your team-mate and will then play into the contracts you’re offered during your career. But F1 24 has a new way of rating you as a driver, via what Mather called Recognition, which takes into account how you do on track, how successfully you complete contracts and hit targets, how you deal with secret meetings and, if applicable, your performance in F2.

Mather claims that if you do well in the Recognition stakes you will be recognised as the team’s lead driver, so will have a better chance of developing your car in the best direction for you; if, however, your team-mate gets the upper hand, he might develop the car in a direction which doesn’t suit you.

Playing into that is a new feature for the game: secret meetings, which could take place either with other teams or members of your own team. These should add a level of intrigue – always a factor in real-life Formula One – as they can lead to more rapid career advancement, but if word of what happens in your secret meetings gets out (and Mather didn’t say how that might occur), that could have a detrimental effect on your career.

These secret meetings can also unlock secret upgrades and Mather added that the game will have new research and development scenarios which kick in when you finish the first season of a career. He also said F1 24 will have a new system called Accolades, which charts key moments in a driver’s career, such as their first pole or race win. It will be fun, for example, to play as Lewis Hamilton and see if you can win him that elusive eighth Drivers’ Championship; if you play as Nico Hulkenberg, say, the next Accolade for him would be a first race win.

Elsewhere in F1 24’s career mode, Mather reveals that the contract system has been revamped so that you’ll be able to negotiate with other teams from an earlier point in each season, and that what you do on-track can then feed back into those negotiations.

One effect should be that if you have a terrible season, you’ll find yourself in more jeopardy of being demoted to a team towards the back of the grid. You’ll also receive on-track objectives from your race engineer – such as getting out of the dirty air from a car in front to cool your tyres, or putting in a set of quick laps in the midfield in preparation for an undercut pit stop – that plays into your driver rating.

The game’s Rivalries system has also been altered, expanding to three types: your rivalry with your team-mate, your championship rivalries, and an overall driver rating rivalry; all those feed into your career progression and F1 24 will recognise three intensity levels, namely regular, heated, and career-defining (when, for example, you find yourself in something like a Senna versus Prost battle for the championship).

Another major addition to career mode is the addition of a challenge career, in which you take on the game’s challenges but in a career style scenario. That will have an episodic element, with the challenges (which can be pretty diverse racing scenarios) being updated in eight week cycles. You will have a time window in which to do so and Mather says that Codemasters will get the F1 24 community heavily involved in the shape that each challenge cycle takes.

There’s also a new two-player career, in which you can play through a career either with or against a friend – again you can choose to be an existing Formula One or F2 driver in that. Unfortunately, the two-player career won’t include a split-screen option, since that would make the likes of secret meetings an impossibility.

This Formula One season is an unusual one, in that with the exception of the return of China (missing since the pandemic), the tracks are the same as last year. But Codemasters has taken the opportunity to revamp F1 24’s depictions of them, both in terms of bringing track configurations up to date and cosmetically improving them, so that they look more true-to-life. The two main tracks which have benefitted from that in F1 24 are both much-loved classics: Silverstone and Spa.

The former has been revamped to reflect track updates for this year, and the latter has been updated visually. Tantalisingly, Mather dangled the prospect of real driver voiceovers from the game, some drawn from trawling through audio footage from past Grands Prix: it will be fascinating to see how see work, and how they respond to on-track situations in which you find yourself when playing as those drivers.

There will also be some new My Team Icons – that is, much-loved drivers of yore. Most notably James Hunt, Mark Webber, and Nigel Mansell; Codemasters also showed a shot of Juan Pablo Montoya. We can reasonably expect some of those drivers’ classic cars to be in the game. And there will be a new Fan Zone feature, which should bring rewards if your efforts on track (either as yourself or as a real driver) lead to a wave of adulation from the virtual fans. Which, frankly, sounds a tad gimmicky.

More than ever, determining whether F1 24 has a chance of going down as a franchise classic will depend on what it is like to play. If Codemasters’ tweaks to the cars’ underlying physics and modelling have the desired effect they should be a lot more interesting to drive. Although, whether Codemasters will be able to reconcile greater responsiveness with the need for some players to use driver aids remains to be seen.