F1 Race Stars Tier List
December 30, 2025I've been playing a lot of F1 Race Stars recently, and the more i play the game the more i start to love it. Infact, i think it might be in my Top 3 for F1 games overall just behind F1 2010 and the undisputed best game in the series that is F1 2020. However, one thing that's always bothered me is that nobody's gone out of their way to make an official tier list for F1 Race Stars.
Even though all the cars have the same stats, they all have unique abilites. Some of them are so unbelievably broken that it makes choosing any other character seem completely pointless, and some of them are so bad that they actively hinder you more than they help you. This list will go into detail about every ability and how good it makes each character. Just as a side note before we begin, i won't be including TecNova-Star in this ranking as the only thing they do is pick a random ability and roll with it. At that point, the devs might as well have just made them a randomiser button.
If you don't know about the story of this game, you owe it to yourself to watch the Nick Robinson video about the game. It's a little outdated due to the remaster having already been out for a few years now, but it's still worth a watch to get some context about the game from the perspective of someone who grew up with it.
F Tier - Active Hinderance
13th: SauberThe worst team in F1 Race Stars without a shadow of a doubt is Sauber. On paper their ability seems to be quite good, as it makes the yellow bubbles (The F1RS equivalent of a Green Shell) go from a non homing projectile to an aim assisted projectile, and projectiles in F1 Race Stars are deadly. However, not only does the aim assist hardly work, but if you want to snipe someone, there's a VERY good chance that your perfectly lined up shot will get ruined by the shoddy aim assist. In other words, if you use Sauber, you can't do snipes anymore. It's easy to see why they're the worst team, but they aren't the only F tier team.
12th: Caterham
Caterham are one of those special teams where the better you get at the game, the worse they get. This team's special ability is the power to fire out all three blue bubbles (The F1RS equivalent of a Banana) behind you at once instead of firing them one by one. Using all three of your blue bubbles at once may sound cool, but it's a downgrade from the regular item for many reasons. Firstly, if you have more than one Red bubble (the F1RS equivalent of a Red Shell) heading towards you, you're completely screwed due to the fact that you only have one on-demand shield instead of three. Secondly, having free reign over the bubbles lets you put them in trickier spots, giving you more freedom than the triple bubble spread. And the cherry on top of all of this is the fact that you can hit someone mutltiple times with the regular blue bubbles if you aim them right, which is literally impossible with this "Upgrade". The ONLY situation where this is more useful is when there are two cars super close to the back of you, where you MIGHT get some bubble hits that you would have missed before, but the pros don't even get close to outweighing the cons. Although, i would say it's quite fitting when you really think about it, because this does make you more intimidating to overtake... and Petrov had a Caterham seat that year.
E Tier - Pointless Upgrade
11th: LotusI really hate to say it, but Kimi got the short end of the stick with his ability. Do you remember how the Caterham made all of the blue bubbles fire at once? Well, the Lotus does the same thing with the yellow bubbles. This at least makes a little bit more sense, and it is a little more practical by giving you a single shot with a lot of wiggle room. However, it also suffers from a lot of the same problems as the Caterham's abiltiy, mainly in the fact that you can't seperate the rate that you fire the individaul shots. On top of that, there's also a pretty high chance that you'll end up running into one of your own extra shots if you're not paying attention. It does have it's moments, but the buff that the Lotus gives you really isn't worth picking the car for.
D Tier - Miniscule Buff
10th: Satsu-Aceler
Yeah, only ONE of the fictional teams got a unique ability. Dunno why TecNova-Star doesn't have one, but i'm not a Codemaster, so i wouldn't know. Satsu's buff is that the car doesn't go as slow when it's driving offroad. This sounds way more usefull than it actually is, and that's mainly due to the fact that there's almost no off-road sections in this game, and even when there are, there's usually a boost pad or KERS section on the narrow path next to it, so driving on the dirt is pointless. It is still a passive buff that can save a little bit of time, but the amount of time it saves is so miniscule that they might as well not even have it.
9th: Toro Rosso
1st: HRT - Golden Mushroom 2nd: Red Bull - Gives you free boosts when you slipstream 3rd: Williams - Gives you iFrames on boosts 4th: Marussia - Gives you a stronger track warp 5th: McLaren - Let’s you reroll items 6th: Ferrari - Let’s you fire red bubbles behind you, making you better at defense 7th: Mercedes - Gives you more purple bubbles 8th: Force India - Buffs the purple bubble in a good way 9th: Toro Rosso - Buffs the red bubble in a gimmicky, but cool way 10th: Fictional Team - Won’t be useful if you’re a good player 11th: Lotus - Buffs the yellow bubble in a gimmicky way 12th: Caterham - Makes the blue bubble worse 13TH: Sauber
Even though i haven't been in school for many years now (and only graduated from College this year), this was the quote from the video that resonated with me the most, as due to all of the ambitious projects i had in the works, it was becoming super hard to track. It was so much to the point where i've had to give myself an extended break just before Christmas so i don't overly stress myself out. And yet, because i got to play one of these levels at the end of each day, there was always something to look forward to. Not just that, but every completed level gets you that one step closer to not just the end of the game, but Christmas in general. Maybe it's because i've got a lot more planned for Christmas this year, but something about that felt special.
It's also worth mentioning all of the additional content that Extra Toxic added to the remake. Not only did they add a bonus level for collecting all of the Snowflakes in the game, but they even added an additional collectible (The Glitch Pixels) which added entirely new secret segments to every level solely for the sake of collecting all of them.The Glitch Pixels end up unlocking a level that i won't spoil due to how wacky it is, and i won't do the same for the level that the Snowflakes unlock. But all i will say is that the timer for the Snowflake bonus level goes up from counting in minutes to counting in hours for a reason.
All in all, i would whole heartedly recommend the remake for Mission In Snowdriftland. The flash version may still be pretty fun, and the downloadable unlockables you get from the original are super cool in their own right, but the additional content and better resolution of the remake absolutely steamrolls the original. Plus, you're directly supporting the team that made it, so that's a plus. Hell, i might just make yearly playthroughs of the game a tradition from this point forward.
So yeah, outside of video production, that's what i've been up to during the build up to Christmas. I might just make another blog post in a few days talking about how my Christmas went, but we'll see if the mood calls for it. Although, considering the aformentioned laundry list of plans i've got for the holiday, i've got a good feeling about it.
Merry Christmas.
Also, isn't it ironic that Mission In Snowdriftland is technically the first (and only) Nintendo game to release on PC? I mean, i know that MiS is owned by Extra Toxic, but i'm still going to count that because it's way funnier. (Although if you're going to be THAT semanthic about it, you could count Pikmin 1 due to the PC emulator that Nintendo acidentally shipped the game with)