Each car in F1 2018 is a faithful rendition of real-life motorsport racing, giving you control of awesome cars like the Mercedes, McLaren, Ferrari, and other brands. You'll drive in first-person view from the cockpit, getting to see the car up-close and personal, like how the huge front wheels at either side of you run at full speed and curve with your movements. The true-to-life tracks are straight out of locations from across the world. The game's weather is also spectacular to look at, like the sunny skies reflecting off of your car's coat of paint. When it's raining, you're get to see every detail from the open cockpit, with every drop of rainwater dripping down your helmet.

To win races in F1 2018, it comes down to learning when to make those hard turns, when to be aggressive, and when to take the risk of making pit stops. Driving fast is exhilarating as you feel the car's wheel in your hand through your controller or peripheral wheel.

You play the long game in F1 2018, making quick judgment calls on when the best time is to make a pit stop, even if it means losing your lead in the race. When you know you won't be able to make it to the finish line, that's when you'll want to stop. If you want to push your car past its limits, then you can decide to keep going and do your absolute best to drive better and shave off even more time. As you keep playing, this cerebral risk/reward aspect will come more naturally to you, helping you improve your races down the line.

During the story, you get to experience what it's like having the media's attention on you as a pro racer. The reporters come up to you with a camera and prepared questions, asking you about the results of the race -- whether you win or lose -- as a way to probe how you feel. If you give good PR responses about team morale and doing better next time, then your sponsors may see this as a good thing, if and only if that's the kind of reputation they want you to have. But they may want someone who's more of a lone wolf and boasts about their own performance, so that same sponsor won't respond well to your sportsmanship. It's a cool way to feel involved in the sport, giving the sense that you're representing not only yourself, but also your team and your sponsors.

The game gives you a bunch of options to make everything custom-fit for you. There are settings like hiding elements on the screen during races, setting the time of day and the weather you'd like for each track, and tweaking the AI difficulty to your liking. In the career more, there's also an in-depth Research and Development skill tree, improved from F1 2017, with dozens of upgrade options for your car. If the R&D skill trees looks too complicated, you can always go with the recommended options instead.