Codemasters’ mission to become the worldwide dons of the motor racing genre continues apace with the announcement of FUEL and the promise of the “biggest racing environment ever created”.

FUEL is currently in development at Asobo Studios in Bordeaux, France, and is bound for PC, Xbox 360 and PS3 formats in 2009. While Asobo’s previous output might not raise much in the way of an interested eyebrow (Ratatouille, Garfield 2, Sitting Ducks and others) the notion of dynamic weather, “no-boundaries” racing action and 5000+ square miles of wildly varying terrain certainly does. Moreover the fact that Codemasters – the home of Colin McRae DiRT and the excellent Race Driver: GRID – have deemed the game worthy of publishing should be some kind of guarantee of the quality in store.

FUEL is set in an imagined near future, where climate change has decimated the planet and a new breed of racing junkies roam the wastelands in search of competitions to win a supply of precious, ever-dwindling fuel. Yep, les dudes at Asobo have been watching Mad Max – big time – but this is not necessarily a bad thing.

The open-world on/offline racing action features up to 16 players at a time, each piloting suitably “grungy” home-tuned vehicles across such challenging environments as the tsunami-wrecked Pacific coast, treacherous snow-capped mountains, the Grand Canyon, abandoned lakeside resorts and others as you might be able to imagine. The weather plays a spectacular part too, boasting full day to night transitions and pretty much everything unpleasant from the meteorological handbook – sandstorms, thunder& lightning, blizzards, tornados etc. Players will need to adapt their racing strategies on the fly if they’re to succeed against such odds.

“The technology Asobo Studios has developed to build FUEL is ground-breaking. To create a game on this unprecedented scale to this level of graphical quality, complete with all the dynamic weather effects, is a great achievement,” says Barry Jafrato, Senior VP of Brand, Codemasters. “FUEL had to be a special title for Codemasters to include in our racing portfolio and we believe that from both a gameplay and a technical perspective, FUEL compliments our long standing tradition of driving excellence.”

We’ll find out if there’s any substance to Jafrato’s bragging when FUEL is revealed at the Leipzig Games Convention. More very soon, then.