SimHQ.com - Motorsports Zone - Feature: Mods for F 1 Challenge '99-'02

Do you remember the days when the sim's you bought used up something like 100-200MB on your hard disk, and entire mods where so small that you could download several carsets and tracks within an hour?

These days sims take up a lot more hard disk space and the mods weigh in at 200-300MB (or more) for each one. In fact many mods are entirely new sims in their own right with their own launchers, utilizing an existing game engine.

This trend of "mega-mods" really took off with the mods for EA's F1 2001 and was taken to hitherto unseen heights with the GTR2002 mod for EA's F1 2002. Now the teams that make mods for F1 Challenge '99-'02 (F1C), EA's latest Formula 1 simulation, have taken this concept to perfection.

There are so many quality mods for F1C that it is impossible to cover them all in depth, even to choose which ones to cover at all, is a difficult task in itself.

A complete list of mods and download locations is available at F1 Sim Links, and whether you're into sports cars, touring cars or open wheel, you should be able to find a mod or more likely several mods, that suit your preferences. If you want them all, you'll need a big hard disk and plenty of spare-time!

So, based purely on what is on my hard disk at the moment or what has been on it, I'll present some of the mods that I like, and that have received very good ratings by F1 Sim Links.

Two notable mods from the crop of professional-quality mod available for F1C are Team RSDG's Sports Car Challenge (SCC) and Team Virtua_LM's Prototype C (PT-C) mods. The latter has been updated to include cars that raced in the illustrious IMSA-series and more add-ons are planned.

Finally there's the Champ Car 2003 mod which probably represents the best Champ Car experience currently available for the PC.

Let's take a closer look at these three, starting with the present-day cars in SCC, moving on to the "vintage" cars of the late eighties and early nineties as they are portrayed in PT-C. The Champ Car mod will conclude this little overview.

With just a few mouse-clicks, the mods are very easy to install, presenting the user with just the few necessary prompts in order for the mods to install correctly (The Champ Car 2003 mod installs by copying the mod files into your F1C directories).

Sports Car Challenge

Team RSDG's SCC comes with an ingenious front-end that can be activated from your desktop, giving you control of a lot of extra options. The options are presented very nicely and orderly. You might need a few moments to dig into all the options, but once you get the overview, you'll find that the SCC Launcher is an extremely powerful front end that let's you adjust a multitude of items. Items like deciding which championship you wish to compete in and which classes that should be active; you can choose between LMP900, LMP675, GTS, GT and all the classes at the same time. You can also adjust the driving viewpoint which is a nice way of adjusting your in-car seat.

Take a look at the number of AI cars that will be on track though. You can set it to almost 50 cars, but if you do so, you'd better have a small CRAY in your home!

Getting into a race at Spa you'll see the Audi's taking the lead followed by LMP 675's, GTS and GT's There are more Porsches than you can shake a stick at. You can choose to compete in different years from 2001 to 2003.

Team RSDG have made sure there are a lot of tracks to drive with this mod. Among others, you'll find most of the circuits known from the original F1C as well as the Le Mans Sarthe and Bugatti circuits.

Watkins Glen and Road America are also available through downloads from team RSDG's web site.

Not all cars have setups made for them, but a quick search on e.g. RaceSimCentral should see you right.

[Editor's note: RSC is currently offline with some technical issues but will hopefully return soon.]

If you're looking for something to pass the time with while waiting for SimBin's GTR, you can't do better than with this mod. It's incredibly well made and a delight to drive.

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