Codemasters’ latest Formula 1 game, F1 25, is arriving soon on May 30, 2025, and I was recently able to visit the studio’s UK headquarters for a rundown on the biggest changes and additions coming to this year’s entry in the behemoth racing game series.
Arguably the biggest draw to F1 25 is what the developer is referring to as ‘My Team 2.0’. This is a significant overhaul to the single-player career mode option that helps it to feel much less like an afterthought and, based on my 45 minutes of hands-on time, more like a fully-featured mode that complements last year’s main career mode upgrades.
In F1 25, Codemasters has completely ditched what it referred to as the ‘Owner-Driver’ setup of prior My Team iterations, rightly saying it wasn’t really a realistic experience. Now, much like F1 Manager 24, you’ll get to run your very own eleventh team on the grid as its team principal.
Driver’s ed
F1 Manager this isn’t trying to be, though. Despite my comparison, you will still get to race in real-time, choosing one of your two drivers to take control of for any given race weekend. During your initial team setup, you’ll select which two drivers you want in your cars for the season, as well as name your team and set its primary colors and car / suit liveries.
Your options here are unfortunately not quite as broad as they would be in Frontier Developments’ management sim, it seems. During my demo, I could only select from a handful of current F2 talent, including Victor Martins and Ritomo Miyata. However, it’s important to note that I only had time to try out a backmarker-starting team, and more immediate options may be available if you choose a higher starting budget, but more on that soon.
You do get access to the wider driver market during your career, though, where you can scout and enter talks with F1 drivers in order to secure them for your second season and onwards.
Of course, this naturally means you’ll need to perform well as a team and keep your reserves healthy. Additional injections of cash can come from your selection of title sponsor, their objectives for you throughout a season, and, presumably, your overall results and final position in the constructors’ standings at season’s end.
First day on the job
As team principal, research and development projects have now been split into two separate facilities. For example, researched parts will no longer be applied to your cars automatically; you’ll need to develop them now once the research has been completed.
This is also where some very welcome strategic play comes in. Your starting budget will be decided initially by how affluent you want your team to be. There are three presets here, each representing a backmarker, midfield, or frontrunning-capable team.
This will also decide the quality of your starting facilities. After this, your choice of engine provider (Renault, Ferrari, Mercedes, or Red Bull Powertrains – all with differing power and reliability stats) and drivers will eat into your starting budget, too.
With many more behind-the-scenes activities for you to manage in My Team in F1 25, I recommend setting your difficulty appropriately for a more realistic challenge. It wouldn’t make much sense for a backmarker team to be two or three seconds clear of the pack in qualifying, would it?
Growing pains
Unfortunately, F1 25 retains the solitary and frustratingly vague 1-100 difficulty slider for its career modes. This means that for another year, you’ll likely need to run some time trials or set up a few dummy saves to nail down a difficulty that feels right for you. It’s a bit of a let-down for sure, but senior creative director Lee Mather assured me that Codemasters is looking into ways it can provide more straightforward difficulty options, presumably in future games.
“Long term, it is a consideration for us to work out a way to give players the knowledge they need to make that decision. But the only way to do that is to have an idea of how well they drive in the first place,” said Mather.
Creative director Gavin Cooper also threw in his two cents, saying: “It is quite tricky, as different players have different strengths in terms of how well they drive. Their idea of what skill level they’re at can change on a per-track basis. So it can come off as misleading if we don’t get it right.”
Mather also leans into the idea of garnering information from the player themselves and stresses that difficulty in an F1 game, especially, can change dramatically based on things like team choice.
In fairness, the choices of starting budget and team quality in My Team 2.0 will undoubtedly factor into the overall difficulty. For example, a difficulty setting of 70 out of 100 may still vary in challenge depending on if you’re in a front-running McLaren, a mid-pack Williams, or a backmarking Sauber.
Just a glimpse, for now
My session with My Team 2.0 was brief, so I only really got to sample a single race weekend (that’s three practice sessions, qualifying, and the Grand Prix race). But I was also told that team and driver morale will also be a huge factor this time around.
For example, it may be easy to pick favorites and prioritize one driver over the other. That could come in the form of controlling them every race weekend or giving one all the new upgrades while the other has to wait longer.
I’m also currently not sure how well the AI-controlled teammate will perform in any given session. But I have to imagine they’ll perform better if they’re in a good mood, or conversely, be prone to mistakes or less impressive performances if their morale is on the low end.
It all sounds like a compelling balancing act, and certainly not as straightforward as the main career mode where all you need to worry about is jumping into a car and performing as well as you can each weekend.
It may just be my go-to single-player career mode option in F1 25, and I’m looking forward to diving in deeper when the game launches on PS5, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, and PC.
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