Let there be no doubt that Codemasters is serious about motorsport. Here’s three times the proof needed:

• They’ve just got a bunch of their best coders back since rescuing Sega Racing Studios.
• They’ve just launched a compo to win a lush BMW 3-series car for downloaders of their Race Driver: GRID demo – seriously!
• Oh, and they’ve just acquired the Formula One video game license.

Of course this hot property used to be Sony’s domain, which was fine n’ dandy if you happened to be a Playstation owner and perhaps less so for owners of rival consoles. But no matter any more as Codies are planning to bring their F1 offerings out on multiple platforms – PC and handheld included. Better still the GRID team are leading the project and the first fruits of their labours will arrive in time for the 2009 season. Double good!

Okay, so that makes it a full three years between official F1 games, but what’s 36 months between friends, eh? Meanwhile we learn that Codemasters will utilise the same EGO engine that powered Colin McRae: DIRT and Race Driver: GRID, and that some 350 staff will have a hand in development. Real-world stars, such as Lewis Hamilton, and the ferocious motors they gamely attempt to wrangle are a given too, as is the obligatory online/community mode – here cunningly called Formula 1 Online.

All is a bit better than good, then, and given the overall provenance we cannot wait to see the results. More soon please Codemasters…!