The buzz of excitement is ramping up into a full roar as EA Sports F1 25 gets ready for lights out on May 30. And with it comes a whole paddock of improvements, tweaks, and new features to ensure unfamiliar racers and track veterans alike all feel at home. I recently had an opportunity to talk with the developers at EA Codemasters about the upcoming racing game’s newest gameplay features.

“We’re never short of feedback,” says EA Codemasters’ Creative Director Gavin Cooper. “We listen to the community and that informs a lot of our features this year.”

The wealth of voices offering reactions over the figurative team radio don’t just include the official forums and other close sources, but also Esports drivers and content creators who had the opportunity to get their hands on  F1 25, early during its development.

The result is a game which has aimed to sharpen up everything from its car handling, to a glossier TV-style presentation, and enhanced real driver voice over. “Hearing the real drivers’ voices as you’re playing really brings a degree of authenticity to the experience,” says Gavin. “We’ve got almost double the number of voice lines in F1 25 that we had in F1 24, and you experience them in more context, too.” So not only can you hear directly from some of the principals, you’ll also have back and forth exchanges between the real drivers and the in-game race engineers, offering the sort of camaraderie – and tension – of the real thing.

Gavin is also keen to point out that for fans who were frustrated with the samey engine noises in the comprehensive My Team mode, that bugbear has been addressed. “You’re now able to attach the correct audio to the different engine suppliers – so depending on which supplier you pick, it’ll actually make your car sound different. That’s something I know people have wanted for a long time.”

Your very own dream team

On the subject of My Team, the popular mode has received a significant boost, designed to get fans’ hearts racing. This time, rather than being the owner-driver, you’re now the team owner having to manage a pair of drivers. “We know being an owner-driver is not authentic to the sport,” says Gavin. “But now having to manage two drivers opens up a lot of interesting decisions for the player. Previously whenever we’ve asked you to prioritise one driver over the other it wasn’t an interesting choice – you’d naturally choose yourself. Now you have to think about who’s the most important in things like contract negotiation and upgrades.”

While you’ll choose who to control on the track itself during race weekends, managing two different personalities and egos offers more complexity to juggle, on top of running the detailed Engineering, Personnel and Corporate facilities, which can also spill out into how your team, competitors and prospects perceive you. Even when added to the expanded R&D and sponsor systems which interact with perks, upgrades, and relationships, and increased control over Driver Icons to allow AI teams to recruit iconic drivers, it’s still only a selection of the additions you’ll have at your racing gloved fingertips.

Braking Point drives the narrative experience forward

Fans of Braking Point, F1’s massive story mode series, aren’t left on the starting grid, either. “We’re always looking for ways to increase the players’ impact on the narrative,” says Gavin. So now when key events happen, you have the option to choose from the two Konnersport drivers available in that scenario, resulting in various ripple effects which can not only impact some of the race objectives, but also the end of the story itself. Implementing this expansion and various branching narratives was no small task for the development team.

“We’re keeping track of the core narrative, which is supported by various other threads, subplots, and other little storylines that we deliver through the secondary narrative, like phone calls, social media and news posts,” explains Gavin. “And those different threads might be more relevant to one driver but can come back and intersect with the main story. So it’s making sure you’re still getting something that feels specific to that driver and the storylines that you’re engaging with, and still have a coherent overall narrative that everyone can enjoy. It’s difficult, but it’s been a really fun process as well.”

And when you finish Braking Point? Well, there’s a special bonus that will allow you to bring your Konnersport team directly into the Career Mode, for the first time in the series. It’s just one of the many ways F1 25 has stepped up a gear to give you a variety of flexibility in how you want to race.

“There’s a whole matrix of possibilities you can pursue in the game,” says Gavin.  “You can play as an official driver, or a custom driver, but there’s also kinda an 11th team, via Konnersport or Apex. Do you still play as a custom driver on an official team, or go for an official driver? And that’s all before you even get into bringing Icons into My Team, too.”

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Immersive details at every turn

As in-depth as many of the existing modes go, the development team haven’t forgotten about the fun little extras, either. In-depth customisation means a better decal editor, there’s the ability to change driver number fonts and colours, and LIDAR scanning has provided millions of referenced data points for a more authentic look and feel for five tracks (Bahrain, Miami, Melbourne, Suzuka, and Imola), including safety barriers, fan areas, and even accurate vegetation.

And now you can also race around Silverstone, Zandvoort, and Austria in reverse track layouts in Grand Prix, Time Trial, Multiplayer, and from the second season of the Career modes. “It’s the feature that seems to catch people out the most,” smiles Gavin. “You think you know those courses, but when you actually get to play them they really do feel like brand new tracks. There’s a lot of nuance, you’re not just driving them backwards. It really spins people’s heads out a little, having a very different experience in a familiar location.”

With F1 25 taking pole year in, year out, it’s no secret that creating these games is arguably as complicated as mapping out a real-life racing campaign, with the development team split into those who work specifically on the ‘even’ year iterations of the series, and those who work on the ‘odd’ years. “We started a central team that works on the stuff that we do every year, so things like handling, AI and so on,” Gavin explains. “They still work on yearly cadence. But having that split team model is really valuable, it lets us set up all of these big features every year. It’s tricky because we overlap, and are essentially working in the game’s build at the same time, but fundamentally a lot of it comes down to good process, good communication, and the right people in the right place.”

It’s a method which, like the best F1 teams, relies on the keenest of teamwork – but comes together every year when it matters. You’ll be able to experience it all for yourself when EA Sports F1 25 launches on PS5 on May 30.