Formula One Racing Championship, a simulation of the 2000 F1 season, is the third entry in Ubi Soft's F1 sim series, which began with the breakthrough Formula One Racing Simulation in 1997 and continued the following year with the even better Monaco Grand Prix Racing Simulation 2. The ante was upped with the release of MicroProse's Grand Prix 3, but F1RC followed through on its promise and firmly positioned Ubi Soft once again at the pinnacle of F1 simulation realism.

The two previous Ubi Soft F1 titles seemed to provide a unique sensation of speed, a thrill as the car bounced over curbs or flitted through the sun-bathed Monaco streets, which other sims somehow couldn't match. F1RC, too, portrays the speed and precision of F1 racing as no other F1 sim is capable. To praise the graphical realism of F1RC is to indulge in flagrant understatement by necessity - it is beautiful, breathtaking, photorealistic, with light playing across the car as you drive, shadows of overpasses and walls darkening the cockpit, and an unparalleled view into the distance (provided you have the PC and 3D card to run it well). But there's much more to the sim than stunning graphics quality.

The circuits in F1RC are modeled using GPS technology - rendering them authentic down to inches. Every bump is modeled, the height of every curb is accurate. As simulations go, it doesn't get any better.

And what about the driving model? The shortcomings of F1RS and MGPRS2 have been rectified. In those sims, throttle modulation was nearly nonexistent. With the traction control aid off, squeezing the throttle in first gear invariably caused severe wheelspin; no finesse was possible. This led to unrealistically high first-gear ratios to counter the problem. F1RC, however, supplies superb driving and physics models - driving on the edge lap after lap is not only possible but incredibly exciting. Moreover, its predecessors were unforgiving when the car started to come around on you; not so in F1RC. The car is saveable, tossable.

The interface, game options, telemetry, ghost-lap feature, and setup capabilities are all top-notch. The only area in which the sim falls short is AI. They are not horrible - they are raceable, certainly - but they do have their serious problems. They get confused on occasion, potentially causing multi-car pileups; they also have a tendency to brake very late for turns (if you're in front of them when they do, you'll be rear-ended in a big way). The hope is that a patch will address the AI issue, though nothing has emerged thus far. Nevertheless, the sim's high points far outweigh this fault.

F1RC is a Formula One buff's dream, carrying the Ubi Soft F1 torch into the new millennium.