F1 Games Should Have Out Of Season Tracks

Formula 1, as a whole, is a bit boring. I know, that sounds odd coming from the man that reviewed F1 2019 and 2020, giving the latter near-perfect glowing praise. However, between Mercedes winning the last three races in this season alone, and taking fifteen of the twenty-one race wins last year, it is rather dull. It is a systemic problem the championship has and has had for many years now. Ferrari dominated the late 90s into the mid-00s. They were followed by a handful of interesting bouts throughout the years, capped off with Red Bull Racing. They were later succeeded by Mercedes, to win four years in a row.

If you like Formula 1 as it stands, that is fine, but there needs to be more to the racing. Of course, this coming year is meant to help that in smaller ways than was planned. Before COVID-19 attacked the championship in March, with one member of the Mclaren-Renault team contracting the virus, the championship was scheduled to go ahead in Australia. About four months on, the racing finally got underway under strange means: A back-to-back double-header at the Red Bull Ring for the Austrian and Styrian GPs. All is well and good.

Putting aside my displeasure with Mercedes winning the last three races so far, what might shock the non Formula 1 enthusiasts to know is the lack of winning teams. Since 2013, when Red Bull was dominating with the now exiting Ferrari driver Sebastian Vettel, there has not been a race winner outside of the top three teams. In the last several years since the Australian GP of 2013, when Kimi Räikkönen last won for Lotus, six drivers at a time are vying for the top step on the podium. In 2012-14 and ’16, there were twenty-two drivers on track, in recent years this has been cut down to just twenty.

With Formula 1 2020 the game, you can once again bring that number back to twenty-two drivers as the 11th team. How does this connect into the games you ask? Well, it also makes the games rather boring, since I’m usually fighting with Max, Lewis, Valtteri, Charles, and Sebastian, the same five of the six drivers from the top three teams. It is representative of the sport, no matter how reluctant I am to call it that. That doesn’t stop it from being boring, it just makes it even more glaring of a flaw in the system Formula 1 has going for itself.

Now, I won’t jokingly demand that we do something Chain Bear rather satirically suggested during his video on penalties for teams without that affecting drivers. That is a rather stupid way of fixing a long term problem with a rather dull short term solution. The systems put in place already are stop gaps to patch over holes that are not ultimately helping the overall paddock. It should be interesting to watch as the teams deal with the current proposed cost and performance testing caps on each season. It’ll be interesting to see it play out and how it will be penalized swiftly and effectively when rules are broken.

What I do want to point out, after a long drawn out workaround to get here, is the current challenges faced in this rather ridiculous season. Already I’ve said that Mercedes have dominated the first three races, and I don’t expect that to change anytime soon. The next two races are at Silverstone, followed by circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, and Spa-Francorchamps. Usually, we see Catalunya in the tempered and rather cool Spring of the Spanish climate, but this year we’re in the middle of Summer. Extreme weather is expected to provide a different kind of challenge to drivers.

However, these are all tracks we’ve seen last year, and/or we see on the regular. It will feel a little different, but more or less the same. It is after Monza when we head up the road to Mugello that we start getting into the “silly season.” A track that has only been used during in-season testing eight years ago, and Ferrari’s own F1 test track. It shall be different to see an Italian double-header. Following that, we are off to the rather dull Sochi Autodrom and the fairly exciting Nürburging, a highly demanded return indeed.

Though this year, Formula 1 is also returning to two staples of the pre-Michael Schumacher domination years. Portugal’s Portimão circuit and Italy’s Imola, the track that tragically claimed the life of Brazillian racing legend Ayrton Senna. Four of the thirteen penciled in races, so far, were never meant to be on this year’s proposed twenty-two race calendar year. The front of the field might still be dominated by Mercedes by the end of the very short year, possibly ending in the Middle East with a double-header, but they will prove interesting.

Within the game for this year’s season, which has been bonked on the head like most live events, there have been drastic changes to what was once planned. Though, two of those planned races were new; One in Hanoi on one of the world’s most boring race tracks, and another in Zandvoort that proves to be great fun if you take turn 15 at speed. I’ll complain about the Hanoi Street circuit being another Tilke mess all day long, but it is different. I’ve driven around Melbourne’s Albert Park enough times I could drive it with my eyes closed, while driving at 200 miles per hour.

I’m not bored of the tracks, what I’m saying is there is a lack of spice and variety to the Formula 1 season; within who is winning each race and where races take place. I’ll happily drive around Monaco for two hours if that it means I get to laugh and cry while rubber flies off my tires climbing Eau Rouge and Raidillon, to peel it down the Kemmel Straight in Spa. I’ll take the Spanish GP if it means I get to take 130R at full speed as I lap someone on the outside. All the same, I do like experiencing something new and last year the newest addition was Baku from 2017.

No, I’m not saying F1 should make its rules a bit more relaxed on what makes an F1 track suitable, once again turning to Chain Bear on that one. What I’m slowly but surely nudging towards, with this year as a bit of a proving ground, is the fact that the F1 games could theoretically add some tracks to the collection in-game. Before you start thinking that I’ve gone mad, I have a good point here and it was something reviewers didn’t get to preview before launch: The “Shop.”

I’ve spoken at length on microtransactions, mostly as a staunch disavower of the practice of implementing them into games that are perfectly fine without them. So that is all games? Yes. However, I will point out these are the rather weak argument of “they are just cosmetic.” Sure, I’ll wave that off for a minute, as I’ve already gone on far too long to get to my point: Just make DLC instead. At least then you have something that has to do with gameplay and you aren’t disadvantaging some players with pay-to-win mechanics. Or as F1 puts it, cost cap measures.

I’m also not saying that Codemasters should drop everything for next year’s game, just to make thirty DLC tracks to race on. What I’m suggesting is a rather relaxed process of implementing older tracks into the newer games. We already see the cars of legends showcased. In theory, most tracks for F1 need an FIA grade 1 rating, which some old tracks still have. Korea, Jerez, Fuji, Fiorano, Indianapolis, Valencia, and Sepang all continue to hold grade 1 ratings, along with a few others. Though it would be as flat as Hanoi, it would be interesting to see an F1 car handle Nordic temperatures on the Kymi Ring.

Keep in mind, there are older cars in the game, so locking Brands Hatch, Zolder, Detroit, Donington, Kyalami, Long Beach, Adelaide, and more to older cars wouldn’t be a bad idea. Does it make it less of a simulator? Kind of, and does that matter? No. At the heart of it, it is still a video game lightly emulating the fast and furious growl of the engines and passion of the racing in F1. It shouldn’t be one for one realistic, and I’ll stick to my guns on this one, as I don’t believe cowboy simulators should be either.

Though I don’t know the exact number of folks that work on F1 games each year, one could assume the number is comparable to the teams behind WWE 2K16 & 17. With that said, it could reasonably be said 2K16 and 17 do this suggested approach by default. Offering different sets and backdrops for wrestling matches, both in the rather modern homogenized set dressing of the 2010s back to the rather dull WrestleMania sets of the 1980s. Right between those two sits the extravagant PPV sets of the 2000s, along with modern WrestleManias.

With the present season of Formula 1 returning to tracks last seen in the 90s and 2000s, next year could be a testing pot for this idea. Either as DLC or as part of the base game. It would be interesting to see some of these circuits, possibly recreating this rather nonsensical season of two races at the same track, among other madness. We now have the track selection and race season length options. It may even spark more interest in older tracks too.

Now, quickly before I end, I’ll state why in all likelihood this won’t happen. The excessive resources required to code, make all the art, polish it, test it, polish it again, and test it further, alone is reason enough not to do it. However, the most likely reason not to feature non-championship tracks of the present year would be licenses and sponsorships. Sponsorships are easy enough to fix, plastering whoever and whatever anywhere makes sense, though buying licenses to feature the tracks happens to be the big killer of the concept.

My argument for doing this is simple, though I might be biased for bringing it up in the first place: If we can’t have it in the real world, why don’t we just do it in the virtual world? That is why we had the virtual GP races during lockdown for four months, let the virtual world lead again into possible futures and distant memories.