Codemasters’ decision to annualise their modern take on Formula 1 racing wasn’t received so well when they announced it. That was over eighteen months ago, and not long after that they managed to release F1 2011, a sequel that not only proved its worth by fixing the original racer’s many issues but improved drastically upon its framework.

But despite this, I still find myself asking the same questions about their newest iteration of the series, F1 2012. I was not alone in wondering whether there was anything more Codemasters could do with such a precise and regimented sport that would warrant a second F1 game in twelve months. Whilst F1 2012 makes a big effort to try and inject freshness into the series, with plenty of new additions both immediate and subtle, it never quite shakes the feeling that Codemasters could – and maybe should – have taken a year off.

One of the main drawbacks of the previous F1 games was that they were nigh-on inaccessible to beginners. Sure, it was easy enough to whack all the assists on and begin driving, but the game offered no help to players looking to expand their knowledge of tactics and actually understand what makes a successful race at more realistic difficulty settings. All the way through this game, you can see that F1 2012 was designed with the Formula 1 virgin in mind. From the new Young Driver’s Test – a bona fide tutorial mode that automatically launches when you first boot the game – to the helpful track analysis videos in career, there’s information all over this game designed to ease players in. That’s not to say Codemasters have skimped on any of the series’ technical depth. There’s the wide array of R&D goals, car modifications and tech jargon that F1 fans will be familiar with, but they’re presented in an easier-to-understand way. This is particularly apparent in the pit-lane menus, where it’s now much easier to see just what effects the subtle tweaks you make have on your car. I was hopeful that the incredibly deep, team micro-management from Codies’ free-to-play browser game F1 Online would be incorporated into career, but this was unfortunately too ambitious or late to make any appearance.

Racing is more fun than it has ever been in 2012. Codemasters have successfully managed to combine the realism and finesse of Forza, the thrilling fun of Race Driver: GRiD and the pure speed of WipeOut into a race engine that is as rewarding as it is challenging. The handling system has been tweaked in a way that’ll only be apparent to those – like me – who put hundreds of hours into the series’ previous iterations. F1 2011’s cars were a little too light and skittish for many, and it was instantly apparent to me that Codemasters have dialled back the deftness of touch needed to make it round the track this year. In many ways, it feels more similar to their original effort, F1 2010. Cars automatically reduce speed upon leaving the track and feel noticeably weightier. This isn’t saying that they’ve dumbed down the game. In fact it’s quite the opposite. Whilst it’s slightly tougher to send your car into a big spin this year, it’s also much harder to correct it without losing masses of time. It means that you’ll be focusing more on car downforce instead of tyre wear, and every year it becomes more thrilling attempting to push the limits of your vehicle. A few gameplay niggles from the past are still present and correct, most prominently highly schizophrenic difficulty. AI skill and aggression can vary wildly between game modes and tracks, so it can be initially jarring until you figure out on which tracks you might want to consider tweaking difficulty setups.

Whilst F1 2011 was really quite a barebones affair, with just career, time trials and online play, F1 2012 has a whole bunch of different modes and quirks in an effort to entertain. Challenge scenarios that ask you to overtake a certain driver within an allotted number of laps, numerous time attacks and Codemasters’ fantastic leaderboard-integrated time trial system give longevity to a series that didn’t have a lot of it beforehand. Whilst playing racing simulators in multiplayer isn’t always a recipe for fun, an effort has at least been made with F1 2012 to give a good framework on which to hang your 24 car, first-turn pileups. 16-player online races are a blast, and connectivity is excellent provided you can find a group of people who won’t verbally abuse you or T-bone you for the sake of it.

F1 2012 is in every facet a striking game. F1 2011 was the last game in which Codemasters used their “virtual trailer/paddock” menus. DiRT 3, Showdown, and now F1 2012 all have similar, crisp menus which are a joy to navigate. This is perhaps not the most coveted of compliments, but those guys at Codies really are making the best menus in the business right now. Considering they now have to cram over half a dozen different gameplay modes into the main menu, it doesn’t feel cluttered, and I never find myself getting lost. EA Sports, take note.

Likewise, the on-track action has never looked so beautiful. Tracks are bright and sunny most of the time, but there are also some excellent dynamic weather effects. Weather conditions can now vary across the circuit, and having to adjust your driving strategy because a small section of the track is receiving more rain than the rest adds extra realism and tactical depth. The only downside is that there appears to be a negligible amount of motion blur added that initially played havoc with my ability to spot braking points. This, however, is quickly dissipated through practice and will only be a problem to veteran players.

For all that Codemasters added, and as great as the racing in this game is, I can’t help but feel the third iteration of the series could have been so much more. For very little reason, Codemasters have chosen to remove or hide some features from the game. Players now only get one Friday Practice session instead of the proper amount of three, career races can only be raced at 25, 50 or 100% distance but, most concerningly, all progressive scaling of tyre degradation has been removed. For those not familiar with Formula 1, tyres, and how fast they wear out of grip, is maybe the single most important tactical aspect of racing. In last years’ game it was implemented very well, and when you selected a career race of, say, 50% distance, the tyres would degrade twice as fast. This led to realistic numbers of pit stops per-race, and gave players without the time to play full length races the whole F1 experience.

This year, every tyre in every race degrades at 100% race distance, as if it were real-life. This is a real problem for players who race shorter races of 20-30%, and I just count myself lucky that I like to race long enough endurance runs that this isn’t an issue. The removal of the practice sessions and degradation scaling caused quite the uproar this week amongst fans, and Codemasters hastily assembled an essay-length response as to why they chose to do so. Although they have some valid concerns, most of lead designer Scott Hood’s argument came down to “not enough players are using it, we can’t focus on all this stuff, and maybe we’ll make a bigger game that has all the things you’re demanding in future”.

That last sentence is what continues to bug me about F1 2012. It seems to me like the guys at Codemasters Birmingham are clearly hitting the end of the road with what they can achieve in their yearly timescale. There’s no doubt F1 2012 is the best game in the series, in both content and execution, but it still feels to me like this franchise needs a year off. This is an open, free suggestion to Codemasters: leave 2013 alone. Bring F1 2014 out as a release title for the next generation of consoles and then you’ll have time to incorporate all these features you say you can’t wait to include. See you in a couple of years.

The last couple of weeks have been complicated for Lewis Hamilton. In Spa, he was one of the unfortunate few who were taken out of the race by Romain Grosjean and Pastor Maldonado’s stupidity. Then just a few days later, BBC Pundit, former driver, team boss and controversy-merchant Eddie Jordan broke the “news” that Hamilton was eyeing up a move from MacLaren to Mercedes. Whether there is any truth behind EJ’s claims is yet to be seen, but would the move even benefit Lewis were it to happen?

Right now, MacLaren are the fastest team in the championship. As a team they’ve won the last three races in a row, taking their win total to five out of thirteen, the highest of any team. Hamilton himself has won three races – Canada, Hungary and Italy – making him equal highest with Fernando Alonso for race wins this season. Mercedes on the other hand have only one victory, and despite a strong start to the season they have fallen behind the top teams and settled into the “best of the rest” slot they served in 2011.

But any move to Mercedes would be about more than current form. Rule changes are ever-present in the sport, and when the regulations force teams to move to V6 engines in 2014 Mercedes will have a distinct advantage over MacLaren in terms of development. Mercedes might become a lot more competitive in the near future, but then again nothing can be taken for certain. To move to Mercedes through a desire for increased glory would be a disaster waiting to happen for Hamilton.

So what non-racing reasons does Hamilton have for moving? Firstly, he might be feeling increasingly uncomfortable in the MacLaren team, who may be growing tired of his various personal problems and numerous unprofessional outbursts of late. Even though he appears to have overcome 2011′s poor form, he still manages to land himself in trouble. This month he posted highly sensitive and important telemetry data on Twitter. He received a dressing down from his team, including Jenson Button, who called it “disappointing”. In the end, Hamilton’s employers may simply decide the risk/reward of keeping Lewis on board is too small, and that with so many promising young drivers swelling the ranks of the midfield his services are no longer required.

Alternatively, this whole thing may just be a career ploy by Lewis himself. When Lewis signed his last contract, he managed to get maximum money from MacLaren by flirting with other teams that expressed a passing interest in him. Now it’s time to sign a new contract, but he knows that MacLaren’s current economic policy won’t allow his megastar wage bill. He may just be employing the same trick twice. Whether this works is yet to be seen.

Hamilton’s change in manager certainly has something to do with this. After hiring David Beckam’s Hollywood agent as his manager, replacing his own father, Hamilton’s form fell off a cliff. After struggling through this, said agent now says he has a plan to turn Hamilton into a worldwide star, “the next Beckham”. This is probably the most absurd potential reason for a move, but it is a potential one nonetheless. Hamilton has slowly become one of the most glamorous drivers in Formula 1, tweeting pictures of himself hanging out with US rap stars on a regular basis.

Whatever his reasons, right now moving would be a stupid idea. Mercedes are still a team that can’t quite get it right, whilst MacLaren are a team still comfortably on the top of a very competitive pile. With many commentators predicting MacLaren are slowly edging towards building their own engines, Hamilton would be a fool to jump off a ship that’s currently staying immaculately afloat. No matter how much his giant wage bill stands to be reduced.

The Pirelli tyres are the hinge on which the entire of this season’s championship swings. The teams that have struggled to get consistent results from them, the Red Bulls and the Force Indias being two examples, have had a hard climb up the points table. On the other hand the constructors that have figured them out, notably Lotus and Sauber, have seen a resurgence.

I say this because the reason Lewis Hamilton was able to convert his weekend-long dominance into a race win was his excellent tyre management. It was a race in which only a few cars looked quick enough to win, and although Lewis dominated free practice and qualifying, the Lotus’s race pace is never to be underestimated. Staving off Kimi Raikkonen, who came charging through the field and finished close enough to Hamilton’s behind that he could smell it, Lewis was simply on a different level to the other drivers this week.

The MacLaren looked strong all weekend, and Jenson Button was only unable to finish higher through poor strategy choices and being unable to move through the pack on a track that isn’t generous with overtaking opportunities. The Lotus was also contending for pole position this weekend, and they managed to finish very strongly indeed. Romain Grosjean got a strong podium after some recent inconsistent performances and Raikkonen’s pace goes without saying.

There are increased murmurings concerning the future of Felipe Massa at Ferrari. His contract expires at the end of the season, and whilst Ferrari are being coy about any ongoing talks, it’s the world’s worst kept secret that they’re considering several replacements. Paul di Resta, Sergio Perez, Heikki Kovalienen and even Mark Webber have been touted, and if we’re being completely honest, I don’t see how Massa can save his career now. He needs race wins, fast, and he can’t even get race podiums with the car and abilities he has right now. It will be no surprise to anyone if Sergio Perez quietly slips into a scarlet racing suit and takes his place after the end of the season.

There’s a reason why Fernando Alonso is consistently rated one of the best drivers of his generation by fans and peers alike. This weekend proved it to be true. Consider where Ferrari were in pre-season, over a second slower than the MacLarens in Melbourne and looking even more woeful than 2011. Now, halfway through the season, Fernando Alonso has an increasingly comfortable lead in the drivers’ championship and his nearest competitors struggle with inconsistency.

Inconsistency that is never present in Alonso’s racing. He said himself this weekend that the Ferrari car isn’t the quickest on the grid, and the predictably pedestrian 12th place finish of Felipe Massa illustrates it. Alonso isn’t just leading the championship for Ferrari, he’s leading the championship despite Ferrari. The same can’t be said of Button and Hamilton, who continue to go backwards through a combination of their own inconsistency and sheer bad luck. It was nevertheless Button’s best weekend for a little while, qualifying above his team mate (a rare occasion) and fighting his way up to the podium.

Red Bull Racing are just starting to get switched on now. There’s a renewed pace to them and a steely, measured confidence about Mark Webber. The playing field has levelled out between him and Vettel this season, and he seems a much happier man in the car. Sebastien is predictably going the other way, becoming easily frustrated and expressing it more explicitly than he ever did when he led the championship by 60 points.

They’re now Alonso’s closest rivals, but life isn’t going to get any easier for Red Bull. The Ferrari is growing quicker each week and the FIA introduced new rules today that are deliberately designed to hamper certain systems in the Red Bull engine that it deemed unfair. It’s seems incredible that a two-time world champion leading the championship is considered a victory for the underdog, but that is just the sort of season 2012 is.

The other noteworthy performance of the week came from Sauber. They haven’t quite got their qualifying strategy watertight yet (literally and metaphorically) but when it comes to the race they’ve got a fast car with drivers to match. If they can get their strategy to a level that ensures their cars qualify within the points every week, there will be countless podiums there for the taking. That assumes, of course, that the bigger teams won’t swoop to sign up the promising young Perez or the wildcard Kobayashi first.

Ashley Chittock writes about a whole load of stuff for a whole load of websites. If you want to check it out, here’s some links.

http://darkstation.com/

http://thespursblog.wordpress.com/

http://playeraffinity.com/tv

Whilst not quite the unexpectedly busy and eventful race we had at Valencia, the 2012 British Grand Prix provided more than enough twists and turns to live up to what is one of the most unpredictable seasons in recent memory. There’s a real uncertainty around the sport right now. Both in the paddock, as teams try and gauge just how their competitors’ upgrades are coming along, and amongst the fans. Only a fool would have argued Fernando Alonso would be leading the drivers’ championship at Silverstone back at Christmas, but look where we are now.

The winner was, however, Red Bull’s Mark Webber . They started the season with a slight splutter, but it seems that they’ve been quietly squirrelling away upgrades. Their drivers might not have dominated as they have done in the last two seasons, but they too have been putting in workhorse performances, regularly finishing well into the points. It hasn’t given them a lead in the drivers’ championship but it has given them a fantastic springboard from which to mount a substantial challenge in the latter half of the season.

A late challenge will be made all the easier if McLaren continue their nosedive. The de facto British team of Hamilton and Button had a woeful weekend. Button had yet another poor qualifying, although his starting position of P18 can be blamed largely down to Timo Glock’s timely spin on the start line. Hamilton has no such excuse, starting P8 and finishing P8. Neither looked like they had enough pace to take anything special home this weekend, and Hamilton himself expressed great dissatisfaction with the state of their cars. They started the season as far and away the best car, but it seems that they’ve stayed still as everyone else has moved forward around them..

There was another incident involving Maldonado. Inevitable as the rising and setting of the sun, aren’t they? He pushed Sergio Peréz off the track and out of the race, and Peréz then went on to accuse him of being “dangerous” and that all the drivers were concerned about him. Maldonado claims it’s all just racing, but the stewards disagreed, fining him £8,000 after the race. Although this incident in particular isn’t too bad, when you assess the bigger picture and see that he’s caused some sort of malicious or accidental in more races than you can remember you realise that something needs to be done about him.

He showed he can drive maturely in his win at Barcelona earlier in the year. Perhaps he is just too eager to lead races in a car that’s not quite of that pedigree, and this frustration and passion shows in his racing. Maybe he has a different interpretation of the racing rules than other drivers. Either way, he really should calm down now before he sees himself getting punishments that’ll keep him out of the car on race day.

So all in all it was a quietly eventful race. Not the most thrill-a-minute of the year, but the surprisingly great weather ruined a lot of team strategies. It could prove to be the turning point in the season, the race in which Red Bull really began to step up their game. Only time will tell.

With the British Grand Prix commencing tomorrow, its only right that we give you the great coverage you deserve! Already picked a winner? Placed your bets? 

Practice laps begin tomorrow, and with a weekend of forecast rain ahead, its set to be a difficult run for competitors.

Many however are looking forward to the challenge.

Scottish driver Paul Di Resta insists he is confident going into the British Grand Prix despite disappointment in his last two races.The Force India driver finished 11th in the Canadian Grand Prix and seventh in Valencia on Sunday.But despite feeling he could have finished higher, Di Resta is looking forward to Silverstone on 8 July.

Meanwhile Lewis Hamilton is pinning his hopes for a win in Sunday’s British Grand Prix on an upgrade to his McLaren car.The Englishman crashed out of third place during the last race in Valencia and is third in the championship, 23 points behind the leader, Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso.

Ferrari believe they are in with “a good chance” of winning Sunday’s British Grand Prix.Their car should be well suited to the fast nature of the track, says Felipe Massa’s race engineer Rob Smedley. ”Our chances are good, even if it’s no secret we still need to develop and have a quicker car,” he said.

Finally Formula 1 driver Maria de Villota has lost her right eye following a test track crash.She was hurt when the MR-01 race car she was driving hit a support truck at Duxford airfield in Cambridgeshire on Tuesday.It was the first time the 32-year-old Spaniard had driven the car for the Oxfordshire-based Marussia team.

Well, what a race? The cool summer’s day in Germany gave us a fantastic Grand Prix at the infamous Nurburgring yesterday. British driver Lewis Hamilton went a long way to showing his recent critics precisely why he has every right to continue driving with aggressive passion that was just too much for his competitors.

Hamilton squeezed every ounce of power and pace out of his McLaren and he fought admirably to take and re-take leadership of the race several times. A fantastic qualifying lap shoved Vettel off the front row for the first time in months and Lewis took his chance to beat Webber’s sluggish start into the first corner. The racing to follow from Hamilton, Webber and Alonso was edge of the seat stuff and Hamilton came out well ahead of the other podium finishers thanks to some superb overtaking at critical moments in the race.

Sebastian Vettel had a terrible weekend, but somehow he still claimed valuable points with a fourth place finish thanks to a pedestrian tyre stop on the final lap by Philipe Massa in the scarlet Ferrari. Lucky for the German driver who was slow and even spun midway through the race to lose valuable time on the impressive front three.

It seems that RedBull’s early season dominance is coming to an end. McLaren and Ferrari are fighting back, no doubt about it, but is it all a little too late with only 9 races left in the F1 season? I for one, can’t wait to see what transpires over the next handful of races..

Well done Lewis and what a shame that Jenson Button didn’t get a chance to complete what could have been another thrilling finish.

James

The chaps at Pirelli Motorsport have announced they will be taking the hard compound tyres with their silver stripe as the prime tyre for the British Grand Prix at Silverstone and the yellow stripe soft compound tyres as the option tyre.  The German Grand Prix at the Nurburgring will see medium and soft compound tyres and the Hungaroring will host the soft and supersoft PZero tyres that lit up the Canadian Grand Prix.

These decisions make for an exciting variety in terms of team strategy and number of pits stops taken at the next three Formula 1 races. Let’s just hope that Ferrari and McLaren can push the dominant RedBull team again. Vettel is desperate for his team to fix their problem with KERS and whilst that issue remains, there’s always a chance, especially with some vibrant home support for McLaren at Silverstone.

Hard or soft, fingers crossed for an exciting race next weekend..

If you fancy your own set of fresh new grippy Pirelli PZeros, then get great quotes from your nearest fitters from TyreQuote.com

James