Gaming Through They Eyes of a Noob

As stated in the WCP F1 1999 mod review, this was the other F1 mod released this year. F1-S-R’s features the full list of cars that has contested during the FIA Formula One World Championship in 1993. How does it fares compared to the WCP’s mod? Let’s find out

The 1993 F1 season can be considered as the pinnacle of the F1 history. Relaxed ruling by the FIA means that you can see one of the most technologically advanced race car of it’s time, featuring anti lock brakes, traction control, ground effect, active suspension. Ferrari was also perfecting their semi automatic gearbox at the time, which would be the de-facto gearing mode of choice for teams in years to come.

As with many other F1 mod, you can choose all the cars and drivers that had raced in the 1993 season. This also includes some driver changes, such as Mika Hakkinen, who came to McLaren to replace the under performing Michael Andretti halfway through the season. This was also the last season that Senna drove for the team. The “Professor”, Alain Prost is in his last race season in F1, taking over from reigning world champion Nigel Mansell who decided to move to the US CART series. This is also Michael Schumacher’s first season with Benneton, that would eventually give him the first two of his seven world titles.

So how’s the mod itself then? Well in terms of graphics, it’s one of the best I’ve seen since CTDP’s release. The texture are well done, and it looks great in-game as well. The liveries are various, and you can choose if you want the default tobacco or the EU Non-tobacco ones. You can really see the love done in modelling this when you are in game, and chasing down the car in front of you. It’s THAT good. The movable arms are the best I’ve seen in rFactor, and it reminds me of the one in the F1 Challenge which shows you can add the arms in the game without it looking like it’s broken on the shoulder

The physics are top notch I must say especially after a recent patch was released. Sadly F1-S-R only released the League Edition at this time, thus every car has the same performance. But if this could be taken as a future benchmark, then expect a better physic then, as this one hits it in all the right places. The car feels monstrous to drive at first, and you can feel the rear end slip and slide as the turbo kicks in. It has quite a tendency to understeer, but somehow if you can control it with rear slide it’s magnificent to drive. I am using a stick shifter for this and I must say, the gearbox is quite good, especially when you try to drop 2 gears at once to induce engine braking. Must be warned tho, you can lock up the rears quite heavily doing this, and in some cases, blow the engine up. Thus you might need to take a while to get use to it.

Test drove the mod at Monza, and it’s feels like a dream to drive. With all the long straights, the car’s V10 engine could stretch it’s leg all it wanted, and after a few tweak, the car was ready to be driven as it’s meant to be. One thing I hate tho is the McLaren’s rev meter. The rev meter is red on a black background, and you can’t really see anything if the sun is shining straight on the dashboard. Other dashboards/rev meters on other teams don’t seem to have this problem.

If you feel you want to drive something different from the fast but easy F1 cars of the noughties, try giving the mod a try. You might end up loving it.

Rig
Intel Core2Quad Q8200
Windows 7 Ultimate (32bit)
nVidia GTS250
4X 1GB Kingston HyperX ram (3GB physically used)
rFactor 1.255 (running at 1680*1050)
Logitech G25 (200° rotation, H shifter configuration)