Last year I planned to buy the F1 title, but ultimately skipped it because I wasn't exactly convinced that it was worth the money. Reading this, I'm not exactly convinced to buy it this year either. Guess I'll enjoy myself with going sbinalla in Assetto Corsa with the Race Sim Studio F1-like cars instead.
I played for an hour or two today (50% career mode race) and really enjoyed the new handling model. It's now possible to counter steer even with a gamepad. Another positive thing is that floor damage doesn't occur all the time, as it did last year. That drove me crazy. Graphics also look nice.
So, the driving itself is more fun. The AI also put up a fight (I play on AI 100), without doing anything stupid like steering straight into you. Only nitpick regarding the AI: they are super slow off the line. I can make up way too many places at the start.
Unfortunately, otherwise the career mode has no big changes or new features at all. They only tweaked some minor things ("discounts" on development parts seem to be much higher than last year) but otherwise it's the same as it has been in the last few years. I initially wanted to play MyTeam but it's the same as last year too, so there's still no proper livery editor. And the base liveries all look terrible in my opinion. So regular career mode it is for me.
I wish Codemasters would focus on improving the core gameplay, co-op mode, league features, new animations, or returning classic cars over expanding the braking point drama styled story.
I need less couch customization and more substance to be motivated to hop back in to a yearly release.