How Codemasters is reinventing My Team in F1 25

When the My Team mode was introduced in F1 2020, it was a breakthrough. For the first time in a Codemasters F1 game, you could create and manage a fictional team to rival the official teams and drivers.

Since then, this fan-favourite mode has remained mostly unchanged, with Codemasters prioritising overhauling the Driver Career mode in F1 24. That’s set to change in F1 25, with My Team receiving its first significant revamp in half a decade. It’s so significant that Codemasters calls it ‘My Team 2.0.’ 

Since F1 2020, My Team lets you create yourself as a fictional driver, manage a team and hire a teammate. This means you also race as yourself alongside your teammate on the track. In F1 25, My Team’s concept is changing. Instead of a driver-owner, you take the role of the team boss, managing two real-world drivers at the same time.

This sweeping change makes My Team more authentic to the sport. After all, the last person to win a Formula 1 championship as a driver and team owner was Sir Jack Brabham in 1966.

“We can make you uncomfortable and choose between your babies”

“The old system where you identify as one of the drivers cut off a lot of potential avenues we could pursue in terms of interesting decision-making,” F1 25’s Creative Director Gavin Cooper explained.

“We would have liked to ask you to prioritise one driver over another, but that decision becomes meaningless: you always want to pick yourself because you want to win. That’s why we wanted to move away from you identifying as one of the drivers and make you feel like you’re the person who’s making decisions about that pairing – we can make you uncomfortable and choose between your babies.”

Managing two drivers opens new scenarios and decisions that weren’t possible before, from prioritising upgrades to favouring star drivers. Codemasters hopes this will capture the behind-the-scenes drama seen in Drive to Survive.

“Which of these drivers is going to serve you best in terms of pursuing the championship? Or how your interactions with them impact how you negotiate with them in the future. It gets a bit spicy, which is the side of the sport we love in terms of the drama. That’s what we wanted to introduce and couldn’t do before,” said Cooper.  

“It also opens a scenario we see in the sport at the moment,” F1 25’s Senior Creative Director Lee Mather added. “You’ve got Red Bull, which has Max as the overwhelming dominating factor in the team. But then you’ve got a team like McLaren, with two drivers on a very even footing.”  

“Which of those scenarios are you likely to find yourself in running your team in My Team? Have you chosen to blow all your money on a top driver and not worry about the second seat? Or have you gone on a more even approach to try and take the Constructor’s Championship? Those are opportunities we didn’t have when we first built My Team. We want to give the player more choice and more opportunities to have very different scenarios.”

After hiring two drivers, you can negotiate contracts with official drivers from rival teams or recruit driver icons. This sounds like the contract system introduced in F1 24’s Driver Career, where negotiation meetings are shown as cut scenes.

Driver icons are also changing across My Team and Driver Career. Rival AI teams can now recruit driver icons, so you might see Ferrari, for example, sign Michael Schumacher. You can also hire Formula 3 drivers and esports drivers or enable and disable specific driver icons that appear in the market, whether you want to focus on current, historical or fictional drivers.

It’s worth noting that although you can no longer create a custom driver in My Team, this is still possible in Driver Career, which carries over from F1 24, or you can race as an official driver from the 2025 championship. As well as driver icons, you can also add a whole team, including Braking Point’s fictional Konnersport and AXGP (exclusive to the Iconic Edition) from the forthcoming F1 movie starring Brad Pitt. Other than that, Driver Career appears to be mostly unchanged.

As a team owner, every choice you make earns XP. A new skill tree called ‘Owner Perks’ allows you to specialise in different management areas, including engineering, corporate or personnel, impacting your team’s performance.

Revamped R&D

How you unlock new car parts is also changing. Before, resource points earned from your on-track actions could be spent on researching parts. Once complete, parts were automatically developed and could be applied to both cars simultaneously.

In F1 25, research and development are split into separate systems. Like before, upgrades can be purchased with research points. However, once research is complete, parts must now be manually constructed before you can apply them to your car, adding an extra step in car development.

This presents another interesting dilemma: You can now develop one part or build two in tandem for both cars. Building two parts is cheaper but takes more time than building one part. If you build one part or one of the two parts fails, only one driver can benefit from the upgraded car. Consistently favouring a driver affects how they perceive you and your team’s relationship.

Unlike before, the look and size of your Team HQ hub changes as your team expands. Each facility (engineering, personnel and corporate) has a dedicated workforce, which increases with more staff as your facilities improve.

The upgrade system has also improved, increasing each facility’s maximum workforce and effectiveness. For example, you’ll earn more research points in a race weekend with a larger engineering workforce.

Of course, the catch is that larger facilities are more expensive to run, so you must balance the size of your workforce and its effectiveness without exceeding the cost cap.   

There is also an updated title sponsorship system. Like before, sponsors give you goals to achieve, but this time, being loyal to your sponsor can unlock rewards as you level up such as cash bonuses, XP or liveries.  

F1 25’s revamped My Team also introduces a new Fan Points progression system. Completing accolades and rivalries improves your Fan Rating. Both systems carry over from F1 24’s Driver Career, with rivalries adapted to allow team versus team rivalries.

Alongside your Fan Rating, your Sentiment Rating reflects your team’s reputation in the sport. This can affect contract negotiations, with drivers demanding different terms depending on your reputation. 

Filling the F1 Manager void    

F1 25’s deeper team management elements invite comparisons to Frontier’s F1 Manager series. Codemasters feels that F1 25 offers the best of both worlds. “It lets us differentiate between the two F1 fantasies. We have Driver Career if you want to live the fantasy of being the F1 driver and the best on the grid. It sells the differentiation between that and My Team, which is more management-oriented,” said Cooper.

With Frontier cancelling the F1 Manager series after it underperformed, My Team could, in theory, plug the gap. However, Codemasters emphasises it will never be a full-blown manager simulator.

“Fundamentally, we’re never going to go as far as F1 Manager – we are still fundamentally a racing game with management elements,” Cooper asserted. “But it has opened up a lot of interesting depth.”

“I think players who want that kind of experience can find it. We’ve tried to make it as approachable as possible. It’s a balancing act balancing that extra depth with how easy it is for new players to get stuck into.”

“There’s a bunch of stuff that lets players do things like have the R&D system automated or auto-fill activities instead of worrying about the details. We want as many players as possible to enjoy the experience and live the dream of being the F1 team owner.”

With deeper management mechanics and new team narrative opportunities, F1 25’s redesigned My Team is shaping up to be a promising step forward. Whether it’s enough to reinvigorate the F1 game series remains to be seen.

Are you excited about My Team’s changes in F1 25? Let us know in the comments below.

F1 25 releases on 30^th May for PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X|S, with early access starting on 27^th May for those who pre-order the Iconic Edition. For the first time since F1 2015, F1 25 will not be coming to PS4 or Xbox One.

Alongside the revamped My Team mode, F1 25 introduces a new Braking Point story mode as well as laser-scanned and reverse circuits.

F1 25 My Team main new features

• Manage two real-world drivers instead of creating a custom driver
• New R&D system separates researching and developing upgrades
• New Owners Perks skill tree
• Team HQs expand as your workforce increases
• Cost caps
• Fan Points and Sentiment affect your team’s reputation
• New Formula 3 driver icons, AI teams can now recruit driver icons
• Sponsorship loyalty scheme