F1 24 is finally here for those with the Champions Edition. After a rocky pre-release campaign, normal players have finally been able to try the controversial new handling model, and it is safe to say that the community is split about it.
Throughout the beta and preview period of F1 24, elite drivers, F1 Esports stars, and YouTubers have complained that the handling feels bizarre. Compilations of players throwing the car into corners at unnatural speeds, ramping over kerbs, and fishtailing out of bends have littered Twitter and Reddit.
Every year Codemasters provides a post-release handling patch that fixes a few things, and this year’s is expected to be massive and act on some of that feedback.
But now that normal players are getting a chance to play, the handling is getting more positive feedback. So what’s going on? And how has the F1 series reached this point?
Between a barrier and a hard place
In the build-up to release, Codemasters touted working with three-time F1 champion Max Verstappen, who has been critical of the series in the past, when developing F1 24’s handling.
The result seems to be an all-powerful front end that can dart into corners at outrageous speeds and a car that can ride kerbs hard but has late-corner understeer and outrageous grip, even in extreme wet conditions.
It’s hard to think that Verstappen, a dedicated sim racing competitor, would actually endorse a model that performs drastically different from iRacing or Assetto Corsa.
Throughout the pre-release process, those lucky enough to have access to betas or preview codes have commented on how weird the game feels. In a review of the game, YouTuber Alex Gillon details the absurdly sharp front end, the chronic end-of-corner understeer, and the lack of finish over big curbs. And I don’t agree. You can throw the car around and it feels unnatural, fast and completely different from last year.
But here’s a dirty secret: I don’t hate it.
Rates vs pros
As a fairly average player that sits comfortably in the middle of most time trial tables and isn’t trying to be ultra-fast or climb the PSGL ladder, F1 24’s handling model is like any other new F1 game. It requires some tweaking to get used to, some setup tweaking, and some balancing with my skill limit. And in the end, it’s still F1 and still fun.
If you drive normally, you can get a reasonable feel of the car, feeling where the rear ends up leaving you and correcting for it. The front end feels a little disjointed, pulling the car along one moment and then disappearing the next. But the sharp move to understeer through corners sounds like what many F1 drivers discuss during a race weekend. Tuning in and adapting to it is part of the sport.
However, I can see how things will quickly get ugly at the elite level, where every millisecond counts. There are definitely ways you can harness the handling and create ultra-fast laps that look downright unreal. Those who have spent thousands of hours on previous F1 titles have to retrain their muscle memory on a system that, at the moment, isn’t as realistic as it once was.
And that’s the problem: realism. F1 games have never been super-real, and thanks to YouTube and F1 Esports, there’s now a vociferous section of the F1 community that wants them to be.
However, a push for realism in the F1 series would alienate the silent majority of gamers and put sales at risk.
Kings of the console
Actual sales figures are incredibly hard to come by these days, but we do have a breakdown of F1 23 sales by platform. This provides a clear picture of why Codemasters and EA are keeping F1 in a middle ground that is friendlier than other games.
In Europe, 65% of F1 23 sales were on PS5 per GameIndustry.biz, with PC accounting for just 0.3% of sales. This is a remarkable division, which is likely to be repeated throughout the world. While we don’t have an indication of how many of those console players were using a block, Codemasters will, and we can safely assume it’s a healthy majority.
The silent player base varies from year to year, with F1 22 providing a big spike in sales before falling again for F1 23. A lot of that depends on the overall popularity of the sport rather than anything Codemasters puts in game or do ‘t.
However, the health of the series as a whole depends on console gamers, not elite racers atop time trial charts or YouTube viewing figures.
iRacing, the king of sims, boasts “more than 250,000 sim racers worldwide” on its membership page. How many of them will switch to F1 if Codemasters makes it hyper-realistic? How many players would Codemasters lose if the game became unplayable in one block due to the rough handling and physics models?
It would be economic suicide for Codemasters to turn away from those console players in favor of high-end direct reels on PC. It’s a move EA would never allow to happen.
Changes to come
Given that all the pre-release feedback came from that elite section of players, we can safely assume that the treatment patch will bring back some of the changes and make it more like F1 23.
This will be good in some ways, but it seems like Codemasters is now stuck between the content creator/sports player class and the wider player base. The two groups seem to want drastically different things from an F1 game, and Codemasters is fundamentally unable to satisfy them both.
F1 is the biggest motorsport series by some measure. It’s one of the greatest racing games around, offering the best career mode out there and some of the most enjoyable pick-up-and-play track racing every year.
It sits right in the middle between iRacing and Assetto Corsa Competizione on one end and Forza Horizon and Mario Kart on the other. It’s a good place to be, but the tension within its player base could pull the series out of the middle ground and into a space that doesn’t work for it.
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