Codies Racing Line: May 20, 2021

A a new trailer. A cover art reveal A huge game update. A preview of our real-world rally team beginning another round of action. A money-can’t-buy giveaway. Fantastic stories from our community on the power of games for Mental Health Awareness week.

To take inspiration from those legendary scribes, Smash Mouth, the news keeps coming, and they don’t stop coming.
The Codies Racing Line is your fortnightly update on all the big news and info around Codemasters games – and evidently, it’s needed this week more than ever.

Let’s kick off with a look at the iconic additions just revealed for F1® 2021, launching in July…

F1®

Hey! We’ve got a few things to talk about in this week’s F1® section of the Racing Line, so let’s get straight into it.

F1® 2021

Do you remember when we announced F1® 2021 last month, we said the digital-only Deluxe Edition featured seven soon-to-be-revealed iconic drivers? Well, earlier this week we unveiled those famous faces coming to F1® 2021, with the Deluxe Edition trailer!”

That’s right – Michael Schumacher, Ayrton Senna, Alain Prost, Jenson Button, Nico Rosberg, David Coulthard, and Felipe Massa are all available for Deluxe Edition players to select in F1® 2021’s My Team mode.

These carefully chosen icons have been added to the driver market. If you can meet their expectations and salary requirements, they are available to join you, and you’ll be able to create one epic team. You can discover more about the iconic drivers of the digital Deluxe Edition here. Which iconic driver do you want as your teammate? We’d love to hear from you!

We’ve also unveiled Lewis Hamilton, Max Verstappen and Charles Leclerc as F1® 2021’s cover stars, with the digital Deluxe edition featuring a cover with the seven iconic My Team drivers. We’ll be giving you a closer look very soon, so make sure you keep an eye out for that.

F1® 2020 & F1® Esports

If you’ve been checking out all the F1® Esports action recently and wanting to see how you measure up, the Pro Exhibition event is open in the F1® Esports menu of F1® 2020 right now.

This event is for our Pro Exhibition participants to use, but it’s open for all to try out with no pressure, so see how you get on. You never know, you might just be up there with the best, and you might want to enter in the future!

The Pro Exhibition, where our pool of drivers will be hoping they’ve got what it takes to get selected by an F1® team, takes place on the 27th May, and you won’t want to miss it.

See you next time,

• Jenny
  

DIRT 5

Time to join the revolution!

In case you missed it, we dropped a huge free DIRT 5 update last week in the Red Bull Revolution Update, available to all players on Xbox, PlayStation and PC. Along with big new features including cross-platform matchmaking and ghost lap times, we’ve added a huge amount of official Red Bull liveries from the world of Rally Cross, Dakar and beyond, as well as the official Red Bull arch being available in Playgrounds.

We’re incredibly excited to have added two key community-requested features to DIRT 5 in cross-platform matchmaking and ghosts, and it’s been awesome seeing players make full use of them since last Monday. It’s also been a blast to work with Red Bull on this major update; make sure to check out DIRT 5 livestream VODs from rally cross star Kevin Hansen, and F1 Esports talent Marcel Kiefer, as they took the new update for a spin.

There’s still time to throw your hat into the ring for our huge giveaway, in partnership with Red Bull! We’ve teamed up with the folks at Red Bull Racing Esports to offer up an official Red Bull Racing Esports cap, only revealed last week, along with a crate of Red Bull, to go with a digital copy of DIRT 5 Year One Edition, and exclusive DIRT 5 hoodie and facemask! Full details and T&Cs on this money-can’t-buy drop are here – once you’ve checked that out, head to our giveaway page for entry details.

• Chris

CODEMASTERS DIRT RALLY TEAM

Hello everyone – PJ back again with another rally update.

Junior WRC – Rally de Portugal

After a momentous victory at Croatia Rally a few weeks ago, the Codemasters DiRT Rally Team heads off to Portugal this weekend for the first gravel event of the Junior WRC season.

It’s been a while since Jon and Phil tackled the loose surfaces, so in true DiRT fashion, they’ve been doing plenty of research. Last week the crew headed to Wales for an all-day training session, along with a few guests who got a hands-on experience in various rally cars.

Some of our DiRT Rally development team were in attendance too; they’re always up for comparing the game’s experience to reality! If you want to see some top-notch onboard action from the test session, check out this helmet cam footage Jon uploaded a few days ago. Also, keep an eye out on TommyT999’s channel in the coming weeks, as he got the full DiRT Rally Team experience on camera.

As for the main event, Jon and Phil are in Portugal right now, and over the weekend you can keep an eye on the usual places where we’ll be sharing updates on their journey. Here’s hoping for another strong result!

Catch you all soon,

• PJ

F1® MOBILE RACING

Just a quick reminder from the F1® Mobile Racing team that you don’t have to wait for the Monaco Grand Prix to get underway to get in on the live action! Right now in our free-to-play official F1® racer, we have three GP Events to participate in, against the world, with big rewards on the line.

Along with the Elite Championship and European Tour still open to entries, we now have the Millennium Shootout – one of our biggest events to date, with nine different circuits to take on! Featuring official F1® tracks designed since 2000, it’s a test of endurance and consistency, with the best drivers at the top of the global leaderboards winning major in-game prizes. Good luck!

• Chris
  

ANY OTHER BUSINESS?

Last week was Mental Health Awareness Week and we partnered with Public Health England to help spread some great messages. In the last few months, more than ever, taking a moment to reflect on maintaining or improving mental wellbeing has been extremely important. As studies have shown that gaming can make a positive impact, we wanted to amplify some of the stories our Racing Ahead content creators shared on how Codemasters games have helped them through this difficult period.

You can read about their stories over on the Codemasters News site, which also includes Public Health England’s Mind Plan tool, that can help provide information guidance on mental health in key areas.

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