Formula One is back on on the radar again for this year and, given that we've seen a scintillating season in real life so far we can only hope that can rise to the occasion again this year after delivering a Award-winning performance with 2010.

After being invited to a secret London location in the week before the British Grand Prix at Silverstone we rolled up to find a room set up with a host of units ready to show off all the different components of this year's F1 experience, accompanied by one of Lotus's F1 cars from their 2010 returning season.

There's the pimped-up experience boasting a more welcoming and competitive feel than last year's effort. There's the mandatory single player mode which puts you into the cockpit of your favourite F1 car for a whole season and there's even a split screen mode that'll allow you to show prove to your mates that you are better than Lewis Hamilton at getting past Jenson Button on a wet track.

Everything about Codemaster's interpretation of is about authenticity. Whether you are a novice looking for a bit of fun or a hardened F1 fan looking for the real experience of driving an F1 car without leaving your living room this series has something for you.

First up was the online play and after a race or two to get to grips with the controls it works very nicely. The finished article will support up to 16 player with the rest of the cars filled out on the grid by the game's AI. The experience feels very nice and responsive, especially if you are using a good wheel. There's no real lag to speak of in the LAN games and the car's dynamics feel very lifelike without being too punishing. As long as you have the assists turned on that is.

The cars handling changes dramatically as you move from dry to wet conditions and we tried a few wet races with the standard controller to get a feel for the different conditions. Wet tracks are terrifying. There is very little grip and Codemasters seem to have the aqua-planing effects spot on. Get a wheel off the racing line by mistake and you'll wonder whether you've accidentally ended up on the teacups at Disneyland.

One thing we did notice is that the game feels much more optimised towards steering wheel controllers at this point rather than the standard controller. The regular controls feel a little bit more twitchy, especially in the wet and knowing that there's still a bit of polishing to be done before September we hope this gets ironed out.

Codies have managed to squeeze much more detail into the tracks this time with the new Silverstone layout looking exquisite. There's much more foliage on the tracks and the cockpits are now the real cockpits using the real steering wheels instead of a generic wheel with the badge denoting what car you were sitting in.

This seems very much to be a labour of love for the Codemasters Birmingham team and they have repeatedly emphasised that they would not put a feature in if they didn't think that they could get it right. This year they have increased the kind of details that are necessary. The new Pirelli tyres have been modelled painstakingly to recreate realistic tyre wear across the duration of a race which is visible from the cockpit of the cars.

They have also fine-tuned the Kerrs system to make sure the boost feels right in each car. The new DRS is also in and they have made sure to indicate the DRS points on the track to ensure that players get the full F1 experience as they are seeing it on the TV this year.

Sadly, there's still no safety car. With it being such a crucial element to F1 racing and the effect that it has had on races this season at Monaco and Montreal in particular it is sad to see that they haven't managed to find a way to make it work in the game. More puzzling is that they have left out the formation lap again this year. This is something that would be easier to implement than the safety car and would add an extra layer of authenticity to the game. However, it is a good thing that they have left it out if they couldn't get it right.

It may feel a bit weird that we don't get F1 2011 until the middle of the season but it means that they can work on a wealth of data collected by the teams and shared willingly with Codemasters Birmingham making F1 2011 the best it can be. With all the changes and additions that this season has brought it only makes sense. With the dedication that the team in Birmingham have brought to the series so far F1 2011 will easily be as good as F1 2010 if not better.

F1 2011 is out on 360, PlayStation 3 and on September the 15th.

By Ewan Aiton