• Review

F1 2009 app for iPhone

F1 2009 is now availible on the iPhone and iPod Touch © Codemasters

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If you'd told Alexander Graham Bell in 1875 that one day you'd be able to drive a Formula One car on his new-fangled invention, he would undoubtedly have said: "What's a Formula One car?" Once you'd explained that he would probably have laughed you out of the room.

But by a miracle of mobile technology it is now possible to live out your fantasy of driving a Ferrari F1 car at Monaco while surrounded by grey-faced commuters on the way to work. However, I wouldn't recommend it. The new F1 2009 app available on the Apple iPhone and iPod Touch is mightily impressive but also fundamentally flawed.

Let's start with the positives. If you think the app that tells you which London underground stop to get off at looks good, then F1 2009 will blow your mind. Every track from the 2009 calendar is reproduced in quite incredible detail: the old banking at Monza crosses the current circuit at exactly the right point, the house at the La Source hairpin at Spa is complete with mock-Tudor detailing and there are boats bobbing in the harbour at Monaco. The cars look good too, with distinctly different shapes and carefully detailed diffusers and cockpits. It's clear that a lot of time and effort has gone into making this app visually stunning, it's just a shame that it's let down by the gameplay.

You control the accelerator, brake and KERS button by pressing different parts of the touch-screen and you steer the car by tilting the iPhone left or right - just like a steering wheel. Except it's not just like a steering wheel because there is no feedback or centring, meaning you have about as much control over the car as an eight-year-old pushing a trolley around Sainsbury's. Nevertheless, you should be thankful you have some control over something, because if you play the game on any kind of public transport the swinging picture on the screen is so nauseating that you are likely to vomit all over your trousers.

For these reasons F1 2009 is impossibly difficult. I'm a fully paid-up member of the PlayStation generation, and despite spending a good period of my weekend trying to get the hang of it, I've only managed one clean lap - and that was at Monza where most of the circuit is straight. Most frustrating of all is when you accidentally skip a corner, which is very easily done, and the miniature FIA comes over the radio to tell you your time has been deleted. The fact that people have set laps up to 20 seconds faster than mine is beyond belief - they should be offered an F1 drive.

Unfortunately you can't actually race other cars in the game, as iPhone technology isn't advanced enough to cope with 20 F1 cars on the screen all at once. So you're stuck doing time trials, with the option of aiming for a one-lap flier or taking part in an endurance event in which you attempt - and almost certainly fail - to string a number of fast laps together. I ended up getting bored and decided to accelerate flat-out into a wall, in the hope that my little F1 car would explode into a ball of computer-generated flames and shattered carbon fibre. Sadly it didn't.

So overall, it looks amazing, can be pretty tedious, is expensive for an app at £3.99 (although it is currently on offer at £1.79) and won't allow wheel-to-wheel racing. Actually, having thought about it, it has all the qualities of real-life F1.

You can buy the F1 2009 at the iTunes app store.

Title: F1 2009
Published by: Codemasters
Price: £3.99 (currently on offer for £1.79)

Laurence Edmondson is an assistant editor on ESPNF1

© ESPN Sports Media Ltd.