Which Simracing Game has the Best F1 Content?

Is F1 22 really the ultimate Formula 1 racing game.jpg

Which racing games do you use to drive F1 cars?

  • Raceroom Racing Experience

    Votes: 21 2.3%
  • Automobilista 2

    Votes: 237 26.1%
  • F1 22

    Votes: 222 24.4%
  • Assetto Corsa

    Votes: 558 61.4%
  • iRacing

    Votes: 52 5.7%

  • Total voters
    909
Formula 1 is racing again this weekend, and many simracers will be looking to enjoy these beastly cars at home. But which game should you jump into to for the most immersive, realistic and fun experience? Emily Jones has all the answers in this OverTake video.

Image Credit: EA Sports/Codemasters

This weekend, Formula One heads to Saudi Arabia and the Jeddah Corniche circuit for Round 2 of the 2023 season. With the sport returning to our screens, most simracers will be looking to experience the thrill of driving an F1 car at speed in the many games at our disposal.

The big question however is which simracing title is the best for simulating F1 racing? With plenty of games and mods on the market, Emily Jones - better known as Emree online - has compiled a list. In this video on the OverTake.GG channel, find out which game you should jump into for the ultimate F1 experience.


In the video, Emily, who often appears in videos with our good friends at Overtake, lists five games that feature modern F1 content. A lap of the Red Bull Ring in the most recent F1 machinery available in Raceroom Racing Experience, Automobilista 2, F1 22, Assetto Corsa and iRacing gave her a good idea of each game's handling.

F1 simulator: More than just driving​

Whilst Emily clearly has a favourite car to drive, handling and feeling isn't all one wants from a good F1 game. In fairness, each simulator brings its own unique selling point to what an F1 sim should be.

While iRacing certainly has the most accurate representation of a 2022 F1 racer having been created with real-world data, many will argue it is too hard. Furthermore, with little to no participation online, it doesn't get enough love in-game. As such, there really isn't much of a reason to use, or even buy the iRacing Mercedes W13.


When it comes to F1 22, as Emily mentions, the game simply feels off. The handling model requires many unrealistic inputs to be fast. From rapid downshifts and excessively early upshifts on corner exit, driving in F1 22 is almost a robotic experience. However, when it comes to the gameplay and visuals, the title is exquisite. One can manage their own team as they rise the ranks all whilst competing as a driver. This is a career mode style only present in the Codemasters and EA release, something that sways many a racing fan.

Despite being an older simulator and having some of the least attractive visuals in modern simracing, Raceroom brings excellent force feedback and a great tyre model to the fray. Simracers around the world praise this game on its feeling through the wheel. In fact, out of the five simulators, Emily claimed the Raceroom representation of F1 was the most intuitive and easy to get into.

Automobilista 2 has lots of F1 content both old and new.jpg


From a content aspect, it's tricky to surmount Assetto Corsa, but Automobilista 2 does a fantastic job. Whilst AC gets almost the entirety of its F1 content past and present from third party mods, AMS 2 features plenty of cars made in-house representing the pinnacle of the sport. Sure, Assetto Corsa can more or less recreate every F1 race from the past 70 years including full grids and correct tracks. But AMS 2's content hits an insanely high level of quality unrivalled by other sims.

Each game has its own, unique reason to be used for simulating the most prestigious championship in motorsport.

Which racing simulator do you use to drive F1 cars? What do you look for most in an F1 game?
About author
Angus Martin
Motorsport gets my blood pumping more than anything else. Be it physical or virtual, I'm down to bang doors.

Comments

I can say that it is AMS2 because of Reiza official content, or to say AC because of all of the mods and will not be wrong with any of these options. But what is for certain is that THE OFFICIAL F1 GAME is not the best option for F1 racing.
 
Last edited:
For driving AC comes first, AMS2 at second. AC leads there because I prefer the physics (except for the deadly kerbs due to the single point tyre model) and because it has licensed official content (wow the hype when the SF-15T and SF70H released), as well as class leading mods (RSS, VRC mainly, but I did find a couple of quality conversions as well). AMS2 is in a strange place right now with car behaviour as discussed in a very recent thread so that's enough talk about it.

For offline racing, F1 series, no contest. I feel like F1 22 is a bit too punishing with grip sometimes, but when I get into the mindset it's manageable.

I would like to experience F1 cars in iRacing I must admit, but so far I haven't been in a situation where going all in into iRacing would have been a responsible financial decision.
 
Tough one. I guess a lot of people will see just how the car drives as the most important thing in a sim. To me, the most important thing is simulating the feeling of competing in a race and ultimately a championship in cars I follow in real life.

In that respect, the F1 games give the best simulation of being in F1. They have more in the way of immersion than most of the other more respected sims. They have a lot of atmosphere with full drivers and teams championships, in season development, and other things lacking from other sims. One of my favourite parts that really boosts the feeling of "being there" is making pit stops and seeing the other teams working on my rivals as I go past.

Despite all that, I barely touch the F1 games. I find myself in Assetto Corsa more often than not. With the mods already mentioned, it works quite well and I think there's still more to come from the likes of RARE that will get us closer to the real experience.

If only someone could get working pit crews in the sim...
 
Last edited:
Grand Prix Legends - anything else is for pussies.
And believe me you will understand that, once you have lost a 2-hour grand prix after 105 minutes just because of a single misshift that cracks your camshaft. Period.
I spent a long time not being very good at GPL but GPL 2.0 for AC is a different story. It's rewarding to drive, not tortuous. Old GPL is like playing Operation (for all you oldies).
 
Which game has the best content for early 90's to mid 00's? I want cars with sequential paddles, not stick. I've seen AC has tons as well as rf2 but how do you distinguish from half assed reskined stuff with high quality physics and so on?

I wish they did something like entire 98 roosted and entire 05 rooster.
 
Last edited:
Why is rFactor 2 not on this list? I agree, F1 in Assetto Corsa with the RSS and VRC mods are the best F1 cars in sim racing, but F1 in rFactor 2 is miles better than F1 2022.
 
Having so many SIM choices, I try to use each for what I think it does best. At this time, I use AMS2 for F1. The only thing it's missing is Mod tracks. It has enough F1 cars (current and historical) and Mod Liveries to be my go-to.

Formula Ultimate Gen 2, Formula Reiza, Formula Retro Gen3, and Formula Classic Gen 2 being my currents favs.
 
Last edited:
Yes of course it's a sim. It's simulates the real Formula 1 championship.

And before we are turning this discussion into a arcade vs simulation drama. We all started with an entry game before heading into becoming PC (hardcore) simulation enthusiasts.

To go back to topic: I enjoy the F1 cars in AMS 2 the most at the moment.

A championship sim isn't a car sim, Bram. Just like Bigben's WRC franchise isn't a rally car sim either, and most simmers still regard Richard Burns Rally - an 18 year old game - as the king of rally sims. Just because a game simulates the whole environment around a series or has "official game of.. " stamped on the box doesn't mean it has a high simulation quality with regards to the car you're getting to drive. BeamNG Drive doesn't simulate anything official, but is the most advanced car/driving simulator out there today - both on paper and in feel (and absent from this here list, curiously).

I happen to resonate the same feeling about AMS2's ability to simulate a Formula 1 car. But as much as I like how F1 22 looks, the problem I have with Codemasters' (and now EA's) F1 franchise, which is now believe it or not 15 years old (i.e. not really an entry game), is that despite holding the official F1 license for so long, it was that it never even tried to become the go-to Formula 1 car simulator to start with, and that is because they've never targeted this franchise to be a sim or invested in an engine to allow that. What they want is a yearly product that looks the part in order to bring in cash in increasing amounts from the largest pool out there: gamers, not simmers. Same reason why you don't see Porsche build something like the Singer 911 today.
 
Last edited:
Oh boy here we go.

So let's see the excuses rolling:

For those out there saying that F1 22 is NOT a sim, please explain WHY any of the modern F1 cars in any other game are better physics wise.

And let me already tell you this:

NONE of the "sims" we have simulate even the electronic diffs or active brake bias that real F1 cars have.

So please, fire away...

As for the topic at hand, its obvious, its the Codies game.


Edit: of course i mean for current modern F1s. If we are talking historic then other games come into it, with some mods.
 
Last edited:
A championship sim isn't a car sim, Bram.
And a car sim isn't a racing sim, so back at ya.

F1 games may not get the driving part as well as hardcore sims, but they do get the racing and competition part better than any other racing game on the market, and what I mean by that is that they represent the sporting regulations of the competition, including calendar, session schedule, tyre allocation, part wear and penalties involved, and, most importantly, what Formula 1, as a construction championship, is all about - 10 different cars that are being developed over the course of several seasons.

Sorry, but as excellent as several AC mods are, one car with a set of different skins slapped on it is a pathetic excuse for a Formula 1 representation. It's an equivalent of a well-off guy buying a Formula 1 track experience. You're driving the car, but it has nothing to do with the sport.

And as far as representing the sport goes - because racing is a sport - F1 games are the most in-depth representation. Please, show me another simracing game, where not only you can drive a car with a worn engine and slap a set of worn tyres on it, but sometimes you have to, just like in real life and are being faced with such challenges in an organic way. There's no other game like that, because they're all mainly car sims, as you appropriately called them, not racing sims.
 
Last edited:

Latest News

Article information

Author
Angus Martin
Article read time
3 min read
Views
17,929
Comments
124
Last update

Online or Offline racing?

  • 100% online racing

    Votes: 78 7.1%
  • 75% online 25% offline

    Votes: 119 10.8%
  • 50% online 50% offline

    Votes: 163 14.8%
  • 25% online 75% offline

    Votes: 305 27.6%
  • 100% offline racing

    Votes: 436 39.5%
  • Something else, explain in comment

    Votes: 4 0.4%
Back
Top