Although Formula One Racing isn’t huge in the U.S., where NASCAR reigns, Codemasters continues to find global success with the sport selling millions of copies of the F1 game franchise. With the new season of F1 racing underway, the game publisher and developer is bringing a new game to PC and consoles this September. Codemasters just released F1 2011 for Sony’s PlayStation Vita at launch, but F1 2012 will be driving across PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 later this year.

To mark the announcement and introduce one of F1 2012’s new headline features, Codemasters has released a video following F1 2012 Creative Director, Stephen Hood, as he meets the next generation of drivers at the Young Driver Test.  Filmed at the Yas Marina Circuit, home of the Formula 1 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, Stephen delves into whether playing the new game helps on the real tracks.

F1 2012 will introduce a new Young Driver Test mode as one of the headline additions to the series that will take players even closer to the experience of becoming a Formula One driver.  Players will be introduced to the world of Formula One through a range of tutorials explaining how to handle racing’s most exciting and responsive cars, and challenged to earn a drive from a team for the 2012 FIA Formula One World Championship.

 In the video, rising star Sam Bird, testing for Mercedes AMG Petronas F1 Team, said, “I think Codemasters have done a super job of giving regular people a proper insight into what a Formula One car is like.”

Stefano Coletti, representing Scuderia Toro Rosso added, “When I came to Abu Dhabi I couldn’t go to the simulator so I switched on the video game and started to play.  It actually worked because when I got here I felt like I’d already driven [the circuit].  It was my first race in GP2, first ever time in GP2, and I won in my first race so it actually helped.”

In F1 2012 players will experience the thrill of becoming an F1 driver with a host of new features, wide-ranging technical and gameplay advancements and extensive competitive and co-operative multiplayer components.  F1 2012 will feature all of the official teams, drivers and circuits from the 2012 FIA Formula One World Championship, including the debut of the 2012 Formula 1 United States Grand Prix at Austin, Texas and the return of Germany’s famous Hockenheim circuit to the calendar.

About the Author

John Gaudiosi

Editor-in-Chief

John Gaudiosi has been covering videogames for the past 17 years for outlets like The Washington Post, CNET, Wired Magazine and CBS.com. He has focused on the convergence of entertainment and videogames for outlets like Video Business, Home Media Magazine, Entertainment Weekly, The Hollywood Reporter and Variety. He currently serves as Editor-in-Chief of Gamerlive.TV and is also a freelance game columnist for Reuters and writes for outlets like Playboy Magazine, NVISION Magazine, GamePro Magazine, Official PlayStation Magazine, EGM Now, Maxim.com, AOL GameDaily.com, GeForce.com, and Yahoo! Games. John also serves as the video game expert for NBC in Washington D.C. John was named one of the Top 50 Game Journalists in the world by Next-Gen.biz in 2007. He is the co-author of Scholastic Books' How to Get into Videogames, Prima Publishing's Madden: Twenty Years of Videogame Football and Electronic Arts: The Official History.