F1 22 has been officially announced and we like what we see so far! The official Formula 1 game is set to launch this summer. Classic content is something that hasn't been announced yet though, as it was omitted for F1 2021.
MotoGP 22 was just released and has a full season of classic content to dive into. We believe F1 22 should follow suit, but what would this look like? We've got everything you need to know right here!
MotoGP's Nine
MotoGP 22 has had historical content for a few years now, but Milestone took it to the next level this year. The Nine Career Mode puts you into the racing overalls of legends from that season to relive 2009's best stories.
Nine has at least three different scenarios for all of that season's seventeen races. Nine also has narrated archive footage to break up the action and set the scene for what happened in 2009.
We can't think of any sports game that has something on this level. Nine is a complete retelling of one of MotoGP's greatest seasons and it's the standout new feature in MotoGP 22.
Which season would F1 22 choose?
Formula 1 has been around since 1950, so there aren't any shortages of classic seasons to choose from. 2021 was a brilliant campaign, but that was covered by Codemasters last year.
While a retelling of that season would be great to try years down the line, it's far too fresh for right now. The same is true for any season from 2009 onwards, as all of these have official Codies games covering them.
So, with that in mind, three seasons jump out to us. 2006 saw an amazing duel between Fernando Alonso and Michael Schumacher for the title, as Formula 1 saw a changing of the guard at the top.
2007 has a three-way battle between Sir Lewis Hamilton, Kimi Raikkonen and Alonso in one of the closest championship battles ever.
However, if we could choose, we'd opt for 2003. Schumacher had dominated the 2001 and 2002 seasons, but in '03, things were a lot closer. This was a very open season, one in which Raikkonen, Juan Pablo Montoya and Ralf Schumacher also all had a shot at usurping the five-time world champion.
Are we likely to see this in F1 22?
Recreating an entire season in-game is a huge task, let's not get away from it. F1 22 has to update all of the cars, tracks and drivers, as well as work on other game modes such as Braking Point and the innovative My Team Career mode.
Adding in recreating a whole campaign on top of that is almost as much work as what it required on the 2022 season. Not only would Codies have to create car models for every team in the 2003 season, but also models for the drivers too.
While teams like Ferrari and McLaren were around in 2003, their cars were vastly different. On top of that, we also get into the tricky territory of licencing. Would Jaguar, for example, allow their name to be on the side of these 3D-rendered cars?
When it comes to the tracks, 11 of the 16 circuits will be in F1 22. Furthermore, three of the remaining five have been in past Codemasters F1 games. The issue here though are the layouts of these tracks.
Silverstone and Melbourne, for example, are both going to be in F1 22, but have gone through radical redesigns since 2003. In F1 2013 (the last F1 game to have classic circuits), Codemasters used the current layouts rather than those from the 1980s and 1990s.
While it would feel a little inauthentic to have the modern layouts of circuits in a classic mode, it would be much better than not having them at all.
So, while it's possible we'll get a classic season mode in F1 22, we wouldn't bank on it just yet.