Brawn GP Racing

You’d have to be a pretty atypical gamer to not have even a cursory interest in a Formula One racing game.

First past the App Store checkered flag is Brawn GP Racing, an attractive, speedy title that’s been tuned with the iPhone in mind, even if it doesn’t quite qualify in the pre-race heats.

A collaboration between the ever dependable Fishlabs and the Upstream mobile marketing company, Brawn GP Racing is as much an advergame as it is a licensed racer.

Of course it capitalises on Brawn's dramatic rise out of the ashes of the defunct Honda F1 team, but its main purpose is to encourage you to record your best lap in order to be in with a better chance of winning a Mercedes SL.

The lower your lap times, the more entries you'll send into the online prize draw that will close on the last race of the F1 season. More tracks are due to come in updates over the coming weeks.

It’s an interesting idea that will eventually result in a half-decent F1 racing game. Sadly, that leaves the game in its current state, with one measly track to race on in a single, solitary mode for one lap at a time.

Luckily that track, London, is very well put together. Conveniently managing to squeeze nine tenths of all of London’s most famous landmarks into the panorama that surrounds it, the level of detail evident in the London track is startling. It’s clear that Fishlabs’s considerable expertise in pioneering 3D mobile visuals has not been wasted here.

Pop up is almost non-existent and the Brawn steed itself is a wholly independent 3D entity, quite capable of detaching itself from the track should your command of it spiral out of control.

It would be overly kind, however, not to mention that you are only racing against the clock in a qualifying lap, instead of against other F1 cars in a full on race. It is potentially this luxury that has afforded Brawn GP Racing such a fluid pace, and adding more vehicles to the mix later may exact a price from the framerate.

There's no automatic transmission mode, which for a racing event as complicated as F1 is probably a smart omission. The steering is handled via the accelerometer and can be tuned to varying degrees of sensitivity. There's a tendency to understeer, unless you really twist the device fully into the corners, making handling occasionally unruly.

This feels like the realistic representation of a precision racing vehicle rather than poorly implemented controls, but mastering them requires a patience that some players might begrudge.

The sense of speed and the convincing feeling of inertia as you accelerate into the corners, however, are convincing evidence that Fishlabs has laid solid groundwork for the imminent updates to be plied on top of.

Similarly, the inclusion of Facebook Connect, Twitter and email challenges is encouraging, even if there isn’t much to challenge your friends with yet.

There are various other extras, such as a media section where you can read an RSS style feed of Brawn news and look at pictures of the team in action, which can be saved directly to your device’s photo album.

It’s precious little recompense for a title that offers very little in the way of actual playable content at the outset, however, and even with the promise of three more tracks to come Brawn GP's basic offering should have included more.

It’s a risky tactic that Upstream has opted for and one largely untested in this price bracket (£2.39). Perhaps the chance to enter into a draw to win that luxurious Mercedes SL Roadster for climbing up the leaderboards will be incentive enough for some.

For those just looking for an enjoyable F1 racing game, however, Brawn GP Racing is too much of a tease to be considered as much more than above average.