There was a time when we came from school that we turned on the computer and started F12001. Well for me, this was for a while the daily routine back in my early teens. Now 25 years later EA Sport’s fourth F1 games (F12000, F1200CS, F1 Manager Came before) is the forgotten one in a series many have played and were active online in the days when communities were real communities. Where people made mods pure out of passion and love for the Formula One and the game. Time to celebrate the fact F1 2001 turns 25 years old this year with a small flashback to what could have been, though became the base for F1 2002 and F1C.
It is the 5th of October 2001 when we could finally purchase F1 2001 at Free Record Shop, although I bought it in our local bookstore. The release is relatively late in the season. At that point, only the Japanese Grand Prix was the last Grand Prix of the season, barely a week after the release.
When the game is installed, it looks like a mix of F1 2000 and what eventually would be the base for F1 2002 and F1. The Menu was still old the rest felt new and fresh. The graphics looked fine and the cars, how I experienced it, were nice to race and looked realistic. Especially compared with the previous released games. It did not take long before RH (EmacF1) appeared with the first update for the game. The 2001 season with tobacco sponsorship and up. A year later, while F1 2002 was already released, the 2002 season appeared as well for F1 2001.
There were obviously more modding groups active at this point for the game. However, if you were active in those days you probably recall that the attention shift quickly to F1 2002 when the game got released. Spino appeared with the ITC 1996 and DTM 1995 mod and there was the LeMans 99 mod from Virtua_LM. A guy named MMT made a 2003 and 2006 mod for the game. SBDT appeared with the FIA GT mod. There were some WIP mods that never appeared for the game due to the late release and the release of F1 2002 in June a year later. Mods like Formula Ford, a F1 1975 season and so on. I recall there were even some more announcement done at racesimulations.com.
The game even seems to have become obsolete before It was released. As if we were all waiting for F1 2002. The game many of my generation worked on, and had their first experience with online racing against each other. I think we should honour F1 2001 as well. The game gave us the two-seaters the three-seaters was easy to edit and easy to tweak! Especially adding extra cars and teams to the game was a joy.
Almost no one plays F1 2001 today. If you google for the game, the first few hits are for mods for rFactor2, Asetto Corsa or Automobilista2. 25 years ago, can you believe it?
