Formula One 2001 (video game)

Gameplay

The game's "arcade" mode followed a similar line to that of Formula One 2000, although incentives were now offered in the form of upgrades to the player's car.

A new mode—"Challenge" mode—was introduced. In Challenge mode, players were given a lap around Spa-Francorchamps in Jenson Button's Benetton B201. Players who achieved a fast lap time were given a verification code, and were given the opportunity to post their winning times on the Internet to compare their times to other people's if they have an account.

In some editions, a DVD was given for free. The DVD offers a commentated review of the 2000 season, race by race, with the option to toggle between viewing the main stream, an on-board car camera, view the pitline or see on-screen data such as lap times and positions. These features were used in the former pay-per-view F1 Digital+'s interactive coverage.

Development

Formula One 2001 was developed by Studio 33 for the PlayStation while Sony Studio Liverpool developed the PlayStation 2 version. Formula One 2001 was created with the help of Benetton, Jaguar, Jordan and Arrows. Many of the employees from former franchise owner Psygnosis aided in the development. At the peak of development, the game was worked upon by 25 people with a majority of them being programmers and artists.

The game's engine was based upon a Research and Development project that began two years before the release of the game. This was to develop the physics, collision and A.I. for the game. Sony had an extensive reference library for the tracks including aerial photographs, close-ups of the tracks and over 200 hours of race footage from F1 Digital+. The PlayStation 2 graphical capabilities allowed the team to include more detail such as trackside details which were previously omitted and unique cockpit camera angles.

Studio Liverpool managed to contact Formula One Administration who provided audio samples for all the cars. However, some of the audio samples provided were believed to be unsuitable. To rectify this, the developers spoke to Jordan and Prost and Sound Engineer Michael de Belle visited the garages to record the engine noises from the cars. The original PlayStation's central processing unit was used for sound processing.

Promotion

At the 2001 United States Grand Prix, Sony held a variety of sport promotions with Jenson Button and a multi-million advertising campaign. The advertising efforts in the United States included a national television campaign via network, cable and syndication sports programming. Promotions in print spreads and online adveritising were also used.

A Formula One 2001 American Challenge was held on 29 September 2001 in Castleton, Indiana. The event saw a time trial competition using the game and was played by Jenson Button against consumer Chris Ohanian. Ohanian made it into the final round by scoring one of the top 2 times but in the final, he was defeated by Button who set a lap time of 1:15.6 compared to Ohanian's 1:16.0.

The game features all the drivers and tracks from the 2001 season, but does not represent the replacement drivers that featured in the real F1 season, therefore Pedro de la Rosa, Ricardo Zonta, Alex Yoong and Tomáš Enge are not featured but Pedro de la Rosa featured on their rival game EA Sports F1 2001.

Reception

Formula One 2001 received a mostly positive response from critics upon release, with respective scores of 73% and 77.67% at review aggregators Metacritic and GameRankings.