F1 2021 Prepares for Free Practice

With the ongoing pandemic keeping us mostly indoors, Codemasters invited us to join them online for a preview of F1 2021 to show off the latest and greatest features coming to the series. For the most part, we can expect a more polished version of the previous entries to the series; however, there are one or two notable features coming to 2021 to be excited about.

Last year I mentioned that the addition of “My Team” in the single-player of F1 2020 was something that I didn’t even know I wanted. Being able to take my own team through the Formula 1 calendar really added a sense of “ownership” to the table. It’s still there in 2021, but there’s a new mode coming; it’s called “Braking Point”. Whilst details on the actual content of the mode were kept pretty thin to the ground to avoid spoilers, what we did learn is that it’s a fully-fledged story mode in the Formula 1 universe. Think something along the lines of what you’d see in Netflix’s documentary series Drive to Survive. But this time, you’re a part of that action. You’ll be seeing some familiar faces making an appearance from previous entries in the franchise, too.

A proper two-player career mode has also been added into 2021, meaning you and a friend can race through an entire career together in various ways. Sign up for the same team and try to dominate the points to be world champions. Alternatively, drive for different teams and see who finishes higher up the boards, allowing you to gloat in the face of your adversary. As the career owner, you’re not tied down to a single friend, either. So if one friend goes missing on you, you can swap another friend in to complete some races or even finish the career.

We’ll also be given the opportunity to start anywhere in the season, taking the real world season’s standings into account. For example, take over the wheel of Hamilton just before Monaco this year, with all the real world season points in place and see if you can take the Silver Arrows to a win, improving on their real world performance.

Some smaller improvements coming along with those are a more dynamic approach to how your team works during the My Team mode, meaning your Research & Development team may come to you with a problem. You can either stump up some money to fix it or leave it and potentially have it affect the team later down the line. Speaking of R&D, the UI for this mode has been given a workover, no longer representing a skill tree found in RPG titles, but a more easily followed structure split into the different departments.

Along with the usual smattering of all the licensed teams, drivers and tracks to go with it, 2021 is shaping up to be another great entry into the Formula 1 franchise.