Not from the same developers of Dirt and Grid. Hints of third-party out-sourcing all over this badly developed game.
Codemaster's lastest F1 2010 is clearly not made by the same developers of the Dirt series and Grid. It is merely a C grade game wrapped around the game engine from Dirt II. I'm almost positive that this game was out-sourced to a 3rd party developer, hoping to cash in on the new F1 season and re-use some of the UI technology.
When you first launch the game, there is an overwhelming sense of "budget" all of it. The UI is the first clue. Unlike Dirt 2's cool 3D navigation menus, F1 2010's are completely boring. In Dirt 2, you can see the map and your accomplishments. You can go outside and see photos of the cars you can buy or purchase. To change the settings, you view papers on a table. Yes, the 3D camera move is a bit slow and annoying, but at least it's entertaining. In F1, none of this exists. The camera pans around, but all they did was overlay text over a random background. There are no 3D representations of anything. But ok, it's a game about racing, so we'll forgive the UI for now.
Off to the tracks. First thing that hit me was how ugly the graphics were. I'm playing this game with all settings on max, 4AA/16 at 2560x1600 (running on i960 with quad GTX 295s in SLI). But none of that hardware or setting helped. I can tell that this is the Dirt II engine, but a lot of the details which made Dirt II look amazing is absent from F1. This was a rushed product. The tracks look worse that Dirt 1 or even GTR 2, both of which came out years ago. One good thing is that the FPS was very smooth (average about 70-100 fps, without stutters). But this probably due to the awesome Dirt engine. Again, Dirt II was one graphically entertaining game. F1 is the opposite.
Next comes the driving itself. This game is so arcade no matter what setting you have it on. There is no AI and the car is so forgiving you can play it like Mario Kart. At first I thought it might be the settings. But even after removing all the driving aids, the game is still too forgiving (and I'm using the Logitech G25). The races got super boring as a result.
And that's about it. There are no other interesting things to do in this game. Just load up and do a simple race. There are no fun stuffs to try, or special races to attend around the world. The world of F1 2010 feels completely empty.
In conclusion, F1 2010 belongs in the bargain bin from day one. This is not a competitive product. For a good F1 experience, buy rFactor and load it up with mods. Even GTR 2's F1 racing (despite its lack of true F1 gears), is more fun and heart-pounding than F1 2010.
So buyers beware. This game is not worth your money. It's a shame that Codemasters out-sourced this game to an inexperienced developer. The lack of quality control is all over the place. But this is probably because the core team is working on Dirt 3 – so at least we can end on a positive note.