F1 25 Review: The Formula One Game Evolves Once More

It’s that time of year again: F1 25 fully launches on May 30, and includes a completely revamped My Team mode, new chapters of Braking Point, as well as five new LIDAR scanned tracks – and a handful of tracks that go backwards. For those who preordered the Iconic Edition, F1 25 is already available on May 27.

I’ve been playing it for the last few days, and I’ll let you know the changes, what made me happy, and what parts of the game frustrated me. Let’s get into it!

Lewis Hamilton is the cover star of the F1 25 Iconic Edition. Image: EA Sports / Codemasters

F1 25 Content​

There are two versions you can buy: There is the Standard Edition for €59.99 / $59.99 / £49.99, and the aforementioned Iconic Edition at €79.99 / $79.99 / £69.99. For the latter, a 15% loyalty discount is available if you already own F1 23 or F1 24.

The Iconic Edition also comes with a few other bonuses linked to cover star Lewis Hamilton and the upcoming F1 movie. If you are in the US, a 1-month subscription to F1 TV Pro is also on board.

Cars & Drivers​

Regardless of the version you choose, you will get a simulation of the 2025 Formula One World Championship. Every F1 car is included, along with every driver. Before you ask, as of launch Yuki Tsunoda is in the main Red Bull car, but Jack Doohan is still taking up one of the Alpine seats following the early season driver changes seen in real F1.

All the F2 cars and drivers from the 2024 are included as well. This actually works pretty well if you start in F2 in Career mode, because you end up racing with Oli Bearman, Gabriel Bortoleto, Franco Colapinto, Isack Hadjar, and Kimi Antonelli, which is pretty cool.

Melbourne is one of five tracks that got the LIDAR scan treatment. Image: EA Sports / Codemasters

Tracks​

All tracks from the 2025 F1 season are also included. For the first time, this includes three tracks that you can race in reverse: Zandvoort, Austria, and Silverstone got the ‘wrong way’ treatment, as revealed in late March when the full reveal trailer made its debut.

Zandvoort is okay in reverse. At least most of the track is – but Hugenholtzbocht (normally Turn 4) is insane, like dropping into a toilet bowl at full speed.

The Red Bull Ring, meanwhile, is great in reverse. Dare I say, it’s even better than the normal version! Silverstone sits in the middle of the two, as there hardly any elevation changes to additionally challenge you.

As for the LIDAR-scanned circuits, we have five to play with now. Melbourne, Suzuka, Imola, Miami and Bahrain are now more accurate than in previous F1 games, and this is quite noticeable. These tracks look good, but don’t expect anything groundbreaking. I know Albert Park best, and it really looks a lot better than last year. The tracks match what you’d see in real life, which was the goal.

However, one thing that the F1 games do better than other sims is their sense of occasion and spectacle. In iRacing, I talk about how you can tell they laserscanned the track in a random time, and it feels like you’re racing a track on a Wednesday. This is not an issue in the F1 series, and it’s one of its strenghts: The scanned tracks in particular have so much stuff going on outside the barriers- screens, cranes, fan areas, and more – that you really feel part of a proper race weekend.

F1 25 Handling​

Like most, if not all of you, I have never actually driven an F1 car, so I’m not an expert on how they should feel and behave at any given point.

I do have a comparison to last year’s game, however, and in F1 25, the handling feels very similar to F1 24 – but with more understeer. The new game feels a little different in the wheel, especially when entering corners as the car loads up, so Codemasters have obviously tweaked the Force Feedback a bit.

The biggest difference in driving is that as a result of the additional understeer, you need to be more progressive on the turn-in to prevent some of that understeer, whilst last year you could be more aggressive.

The cars still feel absolutely glued to the ground at high speeds, and curbs do nothing. You can just eat them at 300 km/h and the car doesn’t care, but once you get to really slow corners the car feels like an absolute shopping trolley.

I get aero grip is a thing – the faster you go, the more downforce and grip the car’s wings and floor generate, but to me, this loss of grip at lower speeds feels too exaggerated. F1 cars have massive sticky slicks on, they shouldn’t be wheelspinning in 4th and 5th gear with the wheel straight.

Energy Recovery System (ERS)​

The energy recovery system has been changed a bit for this year, as you can now use the hotlap option during races. Going full hammer time is made a bit easier by this, and it beats just holding the overtake button on every straight.

Controls​

I’ve been playing this year’s game mostly on a Logitech G Pro Direct Drive wheel, which has worked fairly nicely, and had controls set up out of the box – full plug and play. Mouse support in the menus still is not a thing, by the way.

F1 25 On Controller​

Anyway, for the first time since F1 2015, I think, I actually tried the game with a controller as well – and I really enjoyed it.

On a pad, I had a similar experience to MotoGP 25 which released recently with a new Arcade mode. I turned Traction Control to medium, lowered the AI difficulty to around 80, sat on the couch and just cut laps. And I had a really, really good time. If you’re a super serious sim racer like myself, I definitely recommend giving this a try every now and then. It just feels so fun having a battle against the AI and racing to the front knowing if you drive off track a bit it’s probably fine.

While I honestly can’t give an in depth controller review to last year, other than that it felt pretty nice and enjoyable. My recommendation is to not use full Traction control because it interferes too much, and don’t use ABS or else you can brake about 40 metres before the corner – which is a bit excessively late.

Image: EA Sports / Codemasters

Visuals & Sound​

When I was playing on wheel I was using my big ol’ Samsung G9 ultra wide screen, and F1 25 looks really good.
New for this year is the Path Tracing lighting, which is best reserved for a high-end PC system. Even the official recommended settings for the game suggest an RTX 4080 Super/RTX 5080 or RX 7900 XTX to run F1 25 at a stable 60 fps with Path Tracing enabled – in 1080p, that is. So while it looks great, it also requires a lot of horsepower.

I also think generally the game looks a lot better than last year. It also seems to run better on my PC for some reason, which is always nice. As mentioned in our preview of Braking Point 3, the facial animations in the pre-rendered cutscenes (not the in-game ones) have seen an upgrade and are very lifelike and expressive.

Sound wise, the engine sounds are fine – but sound the same as last year. There’s lots more driver recordings whenever anything happens, like radio checks when you get in the car – a nice detail.

F1 25 VR Support​

Like its predecessors, F1 25 supports Virtual Reality. This is exclusive to the PC edition of the game, so those who had been hoping for VR support on PlayStation 5 via the PSVR2 headset are left disappointed. The game’s Steam page features a list of supported VR headsets:

• HP Reverb G2
• HTC Vive Pro
• Meta Quest 2 + Link
• Meta Quest 3 + Link
• Oculus Rift S
• Valve Index

​

F1 25 does support OpenVR as well, so you should be able to run a lot more headsets than those listed above. Triple screens are not natively supported.

Editor’s Note – Yannik​

As open wheelers are best enjoyed in VR in my opinion, I had to give VR in F1 25 a go as well, using my trusty Pico Neo 3 Link. As always, I tried enabling OpenXR toolkit first, and as always, it didn’t work on the first try. But it didn’t really have to, either, as I found out.

Hitting the track in time trial with no further changes to my settings (on the monitor, I ran everything on the highest setting possible, save for Path Tracing that I kept disabled), I was pleasantly surprised. The game ran smoothly and looked good! To really put this to the test some more, I ran a short race at Monaco against a full grid – nothing to complain about here, either.

For reference, here are my relevant PCs specs:

• Intel Core i7 13700K
• MSI GeForce RTX 4080 16GB
• ASUS Prime Z790-P
• 64GB Corsair Vengeance DDR5-5200

As is often the case with VR, the experience may vary depending on your setup. We shall dive deeper into the VR side of F1 25 soon!

F1 25 AI Opponents​

The AI has been worked on for this year, and I’m positive it’s better than in 24. But honestly, it’s still not great. The other drivers still kind of get in the way at times. The starts are not one of the problem areas, though, as the AI seems to get really varied starts and look really organic and humanlike picking their lines off the grid.

However, they still sometimes crashed into the back of me in braking zones instead of going for passing moves. They also still try to go around the outside of me in the most insane braking zones. A very ambitious bunch, you could say.

Braking Point Story Mode – The Return Of Konnersport​

Braking Point returns for this year for third instalment following its debut in F1 2021 and the second part in F1 23. It is the sort of story mode of the F1 series and follows a group of fictional drivers, owners, and the Konnersport team as they compete in the championship. It’s a really good concept, and I’m stoked they have it in the game. The Drive to Survive series is very popular, and this is basically an interactive Drive to Survive mode.

I have to be honest though: The story is really cringeworthy. I’m not going to lie and say it’s not. Some of the things the characters said, like the team manager going “oh I need to remind my driver to change their brake bias, as they keep locking tires” in the middle of a debrief – it cut right through me. I can’t hide that I cringed.

But that isn’t necessarily bad! Racing game stories generally suck. They’re all a bit cringeworthy, but in a way, that’s fine. Some of my favourite racing game stories like Need For Speed Underground 2, Most Wanted, or even Codemaster’s Race Driver games are good examples – I love the stories, but also I have to admit they’re quite cheesy.

Basically – I think we need to just embrace the cringe, and enjoy the stories for what they are.

F1 Movie Scenarios In F1 25​

Going from one story to another, there are a bunch of scenarios for the F1 movie available. It’s a little confusing to understand, but what I’ve interpreted is that these are only available in the Iconic Edition which I don’t like – as they’re actually good.

There are six challenges for which they play a clip from the movie, then you drive the clip they’re referring to, then they play another clip. Most of them will be available from June 30 after the movie launches, but there’s one available so far already. Spoiler alert: Brad Pitt has to drive an F1 car!

The ingame part of these scenarios seems to have the colour grading of the movie which is a really nice touch. Also, the car from the movie uses an F2 steering wheel, as the car they filmed was an F2 car dressed up to be an F1 racer. The game has this detail as well, which I liked.

The one challenge I did was really short, but I almost enjoyed it more than I enjoyed Braking Point.

Game Modes​

Outside these story modes, driver career returns from last year and it’s basically identical to last year’s. I recommend starting with F2, and racing into F1. My driver Bjorn Bear was paired with Oliver Bearman at Haas, which was fun.

Otherwise this is the same as last year. Watching your stats go up is still very satisfying, it has to be said. Co-op career is included again, as well as Challenge career.

You’re the team owner in the revamped MyTeam mode – not an owner-driver anymore.

F1 25 MyTeam​

Perhaps the biggest change for this year is the updates to My Team. And I’ll be honest, they’re really good.

The best way to explain the mode is that Codemasters have taken a bunch of elements from the F1 Manager game and put it into the main F1 game. You need to both design and build new parts, and in general, there is a lot going on, which is a very good thing. The tutorial felt like it went for an hour, which shows how much there is to dive into.

As the team owner, you also need to assign time to what each department does, to maximise development and other things, and you can also control how big each department gets. There’s lots of control, although it’s not at the full F1 Manager-level, but it’s definitely more involved.

One change some fans are unhappy about is that you can’t be an owner-driver anymore. You create your team owner, and then need to hire two drivers. On every race weekend, you have to pick which driver to compete as.

Personally, I am not very convinced by this, because I have a bit of a theory. I need to play more of My Team to see if this is possible, but I’ve been thinking: What’s stopping you from spending your entire budget on hiring Michael Schumacher in your #1 seat, and then saving a heap of money by hiring the cheapest F2 driver ever in your #2? Then, for every race weekend, you play as the F2 driver to get a good result, with Michael also obviously being fast.

F1 World​

Another feature making a return is F1 World – and some of it is a bit frustrating.

There are a lot of good features in F1 World. I do respect and like how Codemasters is really trying to turn this into a live service game with lots of longevity.

There is a lot to do, the game just keeps spitting out races and challenges to you – while you build up your tech level.

I hope you like the Red Bull Ring though, because the first five races I was given in the F1 World series was Austria, Austria Reverse, then Austria again, before Monza, and then Austria Reverse one more time. I didn’t even get to see any Kangaroos – obvious Austria/Australia joke here. Anyway, I don’t know if it just generates races, but this gave me the feeling nobody checked this before release.

The main annoying thing is that the option for single player time trial and singleplayer Grand Prix are housed within F1 World all the way once you’ve scrolled off the screen.

The reverse tracks like Silverstone are available across multiple modes in F1 25. Image: EA Sports / Codemasters

The singleplayer Grand Prix one is the most ridiculous. Surely just getting stuck into an F1 Grand Prix race now needs to be a priority. People want to select Lewis Hamilton, Spa, and then race as easily as possible. But this is hidden so far away.

Also every time you leave a singleplayer Grand Prix, it automatically spits you back out onto the F1 World Series menu, asking you to do an F1 world race.

It feels like the wants you in F1 World so it can get you hooked on doing other races or maybe to spend some money. And to spend money, there are a bunch of options in the store. It’s obvious that EA wants you to buy either the VIP battlepass, or pitcoin.

I will say though, normally I think the liveries they offer are not really worth your while, but I looked in the store and they’re actually cool in F1 25. There are some nice designs in there, also for your helmet. The casual clothes area is just pretty boring though.

In multiplayer, there’s basically all the same options as last year: Ranked racing, League racing, General lobby racing, and a bunch of F1 World races.

There’s also a theatre you can select that automatically creates highlight clips of your races, and a photo mode.

A slightly wet Interlagos – as if the infamous bumps of the Brazilian Grand Prix home weren’t challenging enough on their own.

Verdict​

It is strongly rumoured that this game is the final one for EA Sports as the F1 license is up for renewal. I can’t confirm that, and somehow I don’t believe it – I think we’ll be playing F1 26 by EA/Codies next year. But it’s worth keeping that in mind, this might be the last F1 game from Codemasters we get to play.

That said, F1 25 is better than last year. It’s a definitely improvement over F1 24, with the My Team changes being the standout for me. The rest of the game isn’t groundbreaking though, but rather very similar to last year’s game – which is just what you get with these yearly releases.

There are some nice improvements in the visual department, and a few details like the additional driver radio lines up the immersion nicely. Coupled with the up-to-date cars and driver lineups and the new LIDAR-scanned versions of a few tracks, there are a number of things that are good to see – but nothing revolutionary.

Overall, I’m giving F1 25 3.75 out of 5 stars.

What are your impressions of F1 25? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below, and be sure to add your own review once you got to play the game as well! Meanwhile, feel free to join the discussion in our F1 game series forum.