About Verstappen & Why F1 22 is more of a CM Game than F1 2021

Hi guys,

remember how I said in this post that the Verstappen problem is back in F1 22?

I have to correct myself - this problem does not exist in Career Mode. I only tried the AI in GP Mode, and that's where Verstappen destroys everything. But it makes sense since GP Mode is supposed to mirror the real life season. He can be beaten though, or you can just play as him.

Judging Verstappen's Career Mode performance, he is just as prone to errors and mechanical failures as pretty much every AI. And just like every other driver, his overall pace is calculated by the Pace stat plus the performance of the car. I tested this in the race in Jeddah that I did earlier today, and the only AI that dominated everything was Lewis Hamilton, my teammate, with the dominant car and a Pace stat of 100.

This is absolute proof that this game has far more influence from Codemasters than in F1 2021, where Verstappen was broken as hell. But the list doesn't stop there - I found more reasons why F1 22 is way more of a Codemasters F1 game than last year.

These include:

• I said that my teammate, Lewis Hamilton, dominated everything in Jeddah together with me. I'm just gonna say this - had this been F1 2021, I am 99.9% certain that Lewis Hamilton, one of the top drivers in the grid, takes only 10th place in a car that's supposed to dominate the competition. In other words, every teammate in My Team is useful and can get your team to victory as long as your Personnel department has sufficient upgrades.
• Back in F1 2021, basically every car that the player was driving is acting like a drift car from Need for Speed. In F1 22, the only reasons why you spin out like that is either high tire temperatures, which can be mitigated with lower tire pressures, or by aggressively racing over a curb and bottoming out. If the setup is correct, you can grip the road way better than last year, and this makes driving overall way easier.
• I remember that the AI in F1 2021 was insanely overpowered. While this is not the case in F1 22, it's still hard to keep up on your desired AI difficulty. Especially Canada and Hungary are way more AI track than last year. With the right setup, maybe you could beat the AI in Canada, but Hungary, I don't see how you want to do that unless you decrease the AI by 10 levels.
• Remember when you had to pit in every time you scratched your front wing in F1 2021? This is not as heavy in F1 22, which not only is good, but is actually realistic, since there were many cases in real life in which drivers are still fast despite a missing end plate.
• Like I said, in F1 2021, Verstappen dominated everything in Career Mode. In F1 22, every driver has the chance to win and be champion, as long as they have a great car. This was the case with Nico Hulkenberg in my second, and now with Lewis Hamilton in my third season, and I even saw videos of Lando Norris becoming champion with McLaren. And speaking of being champion, the AI drivers save for Lewis Hamilton using the 1 in the next season is a really neat feature, and it's really satisfying to see Leclerc, Norris, and even Bottas use the number 1 when they became champion in the previous season. While this wasn't the case in F1 2020, it sure is a really cool thing that Codemasters added.

If you ask me, for F1 23, I hope that either Codemasters get more and more development influence for the game, or that Codemasters breaks free from EA and makes games of their own again, without tight schedules from anyone.

I don't know how you feel about it, but F1 22 is definitely more of a Codemasters F1 game than last year. In fact, I don't think that Codemasters had any influence on F1 2021 at all. Give me your opinion about it in a reply.

- Nico