It's 2018 with fixed sound, better graphics, worse handling, and a couple of fictional drivers.

Once again, I think leaving it at that would have been funny, but I want to expand on some things that aren't sound or graphics because there's no point talking about those anymore. They are good, and I don't care to detail why. Most important of the things to detail, though, is the handling. I don't understand why it's so punishing. The cars feel mostly the same as they did in 2018, except with a little less grip and downforce, and now they also lose rear grip with the lightest touch, even on full traction control to an extent. It feels like those rear tires are half as wide as they really are. Braking also seems worse than before, it takes me longer to slow down in a straight line than it used to, and trail braking is very ineffective... but this only seems to apply to me, because the AI are all capable of stopping faster than I am. It's all so much worse for the newly added Formula 2 cars too, which are flat out not fun to drive thanks to how heavy and punishing they are. If it wasn't for that addition, this would have been an even smaller iteration than 2018 was, so I'm at least happy they were added even if I don't like them.

The addition of two fictional drivers and a few cutscenes with them during the F2 intro to career mode is also a nice touch, even if it doesn't really do anything and the drivers are one dimensional at best. One is a dick, the other is a team player, and that's as far as it goes... but it did affect the way I drove around them, and had me looking at four names in the standings instead of just two for a while, so they at least accomplished something. An equally appreciated little touch in this iteration is that your rivals now appear in some of the invitational events, which is very nice, it adds some motivation to accept them and you are now finally rewarded for participating in them with some reputation.

Something I don't understand about this game is how it manages to perform both way better and way worse on my computer. In 2018, there were several places where my frame rate would drop below 110, even down as far as 90 sometimes, and the highest uncapped frame rate I ever saw was 140. In 2019, my highest uncapped frame rate was double that and I never experienced any frame drops at all as a result... but when running above 60, the game feels like it's running at 30, no matter how high it really is, because the display is so rough. It's not stuttering, it's not lag, it's just... unsmooth. Turn on vsync which locks the game to 60 despite my refresh rate being higher, though, and it's perfect. After playing every other game up to now at 120, playing at 60 was quite a massive step down, but I still vastly prefer that over the mess of anything higher in this game.

Overall, I like 2019 more than 2018 almost exclusively because of the fixed sound. If not for that, the worse handling would probably turn me off the game, because playing 2019 is more of a race against yourself than a race again the pack, constantly worrying about keeping the car under control even with medium traction control enabled. My playthrough of this game was flashback city, and I really don't like that, I usually aim to use as little of those as possible. Oh, also the interface is more visible, which is nice. You can even move it wherever you want on the screen now, which would have been great if you could separate the MFD from the rev counter so it doesn't obstruct visibility with the gears in the center of the screen where I want them.

(from my web zone: https://kerosyn.link/i-played-every-codemasters-racing-game-to-prove-a-point/#f1-2019)