With the latest season of F1 getting underway, who wouldn’t want to bring some high speed action to your tabletop? In this piece we’ll revisit the modern star of F1 board games, Heat, and its Heavy Rain expansion while also taking a look at some other racing games dedicated to making you feel like you’re screaming around a track at speeds too high for sanity.
So clip on your seat belt and read on, it’s F1 Board Games time.
Heat zips you around the track
Heat: Pedal to the Metal roared onto the scene in 2022, using a combination of enough copies and quality gameplay to make it onto a whole lotta year-end award lists. It’s currently entrenched on BoardgameGeek’s Hotness list, a constantly shifting set of the fifty most discussed board games on the forum. The 
reason why Heat continues to draw players, whether racing fans or not, is thanks to its compelling card play.
At its basic level, Heat throws you and a bunch of pals—the game plays up to 6, and does so with ease—onto one of several tracks. Then, you’ll get your deck of racing cards, which include the obvious drops to send your car zipping around corners, but also special cards (more if you’re playing with upgrades, which lets every player customize their car before the race) that’ll help control your titular ‘heat’. See, you’ll be able to play more cards if you’re screaming along, but doing so burns up your engine, potentially spinning you out of the race or costing you time as you overshoot turns.
Because all players can pick their cards simultaneously, then slap them down to see how every round plays out, Heat keeps downtime to a minimum, blitzing you and your friends along the course. Draw luck can be mitigated with smart play, such as choosing when to lay down rubber and absorb the heat cost and when to dump slower cards and let your car recover. Heat can be deceptively strategic, and it rewards smart play without being so deterministic that raw skill is the only factor.
Once you’ve mastered the basics, Heat also has a way to turn up the pressure on any longer game night. A mini-campaign mode lets you turn all the tracks into a one-after-another Grand Prix, with players earning points and upgrades based on performance. It’s a great way to elevate stakes without tons of paperwork or added rules, and when you’re hoisting the trophy after a strong series of pole positions, Heat is sure to lock its place in your collection.
Heavy Rain brings weather to the race
So racing is fun and all, but racing in a thunderstorm is even better. Heat: Heavy Rain brings inclement weather to your racetrack, doing what a good
expansion does by adding small, easy-to-apply tweaks that have a big impact on how you’ll win. First up, as the title implies, parts of the track might become submerged and require extra heat or zip to get through, adding a strategic wrinkle to your race plan. You’ll also get a bevy of new upgrades, events, and other cards to inject more variety into your championships.
Good stuff, sure, but for me the real bang here comes with a seventh racer and two more maps, Mexico and Japan, letting you increase your Grand Prix pack by another one (and putting Heat firmly in that rarefied category of large group game with teeth). If you’ve been burning rubber in the years since Heat launched, this is an easy pick-up. This takes F1 board games to the next level
And, coming later this year, Heat’s second expansion, Tunnel Vision will bump that player count to eight (if you own both expansions). You’ll get Spain and the Netherlands tracks too, the former of which puts those technical tunnels front and center. Like Heavy Rain’s submerged tracks, tunnels throw an easy-to-grasp, hard-to-handle situation at drivers by restricting what cards you can discard, leaving you with rough hands if you’re not planning for it. Tunnel Vision also adds in a drafting mechanic, throwing a new symbol on some cards that’ll give you a boost if you’re close behind other racers.
Lastly, both Heavy Rain and Tunnel Vision dramatically up the variety you’ll see in running your championships (those multi-race events). You’ll not only get more tracks, but more scenarios to run on them all, giving Heat a whole lotta life on your table.
An F1 Simulation for the aficionado
Heat is the everyman racer, a game that almost anyone with a little tabletop experience can enjoy (though skill will definitely separate a rookie from a seasoned driver). For those chasing a heavier, more simulation-like experience, there’s Race! Formula 90. Like Heat, you’ll be driving through card play. There’s no dice here, giving tactical play the edge while upping Heat’s complexity. You’ll manage more pieces of your car, including real damage, while trying to gain bonuses around the track through strong driving.
The real differentiator with Race! comes with its emphasis on pre-racing prep. Configuring your car and driver will set up your race strategy, and pursuing that strategy well leads to better cards (and, thus, more burned rubber) during the race itself. This affects the cards you’ll draw, bonuses you’ll hit around the map, and gives some gentle nudges on how you might want to tackle the track. You’ll also be rewarded for racing like a real driver might, choosing your opportunities to make gains rather than throttling up fast the whole way through. That’ll cost good cards from your hand and destroy your tires, necessitating pit stops and costing precious time.
Race! also provides a compelling two and three player experience thanks to its robot car inclusion, helping to simulate a crowded track and offering opportunities for blocking, drafting, and more. Those pieces and other modules can be added and tossed as you like, helping mold Race! to the level of simulation you’re looking for, an important consideration as the full out, all in races can take several hours. That’s a thrilling time if you’re an F1 fan, but might stretch the patience of more casual players who want to try an F1 board game.
And that’s okay! Race! and Heat can co-exist on the same shelf in the same way Lords of Waterdeep and Kanban: EV do: similar core mechanics, but complexity to match a group’s vibe. What’s clear, though, is that if you’re a racing diehard, or always wanted a racing game that rewards both planning and execution, then Race! Formula 90 is worth a long look, whether it’s the original or the new 2nd edition.
The Rest of the Racing Field
While Heat and Race! Formula 90 are great ways to bring the track to your tabletop, they’re far from the only racing experiences out there. We’ve hit on Formula D in an earlier piece, and here are some others that’re worth adding to your board game garage:
Championship Formula Racing: An update of 1971’s Speed Circuit, this card-based racer shares plenty of DNA with the two titles above, but straddles the gap between Heat’s more abstract place and Race!’s heavier simulation to make an accessible racer that still cares about tires and pit stops. It plays up to 12, but for more fun, try having each player control two cars instead of one.
Grand Prix: Taking the stock cars of Thunder Alley and swapping them into F1 gives Grand Prix zest while maintaining its unique team-based gameplay.
Rather than the individual mentality of other racers, Grand Prix has you joining up with a pal (or bot-controlled cars) to attempt to win together this F1 board game. Joint scoring and pooled points means it’s less a winner-take-all than the others on this list, a good choice if you prefer co-ops.
The Rallyman Series: From Rallyman to Rallymen: GT to Rallyman: DIRT, this push-your-luck racing series makes roll-to-move fresh again, as different dice correspond to different gears (in a way both familiar to yet wildly different from Formula D). DIRT is the newest one in the series, but they’re all still fresh and fun, so pick the theme that appeals the most. The create-your-own track feature and emphasis on dice over hand-management make the Rallyman games great with younger audiences too.
Downforce: Arguably the simplest game on this list by rules-load, Downforce turns a race into a bidding war, letting a series of card-based mini auctions determine who’s zooming, how far, and who’ll end up profiting in the end. What makes Downforce compelling is its side bets and winning based on the prize money in your pocket, not your position on the track. Downforce is the game to get if you want the racing spirit without the grit of getting around the track.
It’s hard to get a clearer goal than ‘win the race’, and the F1 board games on this list give you fun ways to burn rubber as you blitz the asphalt in search of victory. Whether or not you and your group are F1 fans, you’ll find these F1 board games engaging simply because their concepts are interactive, their rules are never too complex, and the sweet, sweet taste of victory is just around the next corner.
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