Racing Simulation 3 is already Ubisoft's fourth F1 game release, three others are F1 Racing Simulation back in 1997, 1998 they released Monaco Grand Prix Racing Simulation 2 without official F1 licence, and finally 2001 they released F1 Racing Championship (review) based on 1999 FIA Formula One World Championship season. Racing Simulation 3 is surprisingly without the FIA license, so you have to struggle against imaginary teams, drivers on imaginary tracks.  I don't think that's a serious big problem. If you don't like it, you can try download&install some unofficial patches from http://rs3.igem.net/.

Racing Simulation 3 features 16 tracks (of course, names of the countries hosting the tracks have been altered), the new Indy track (called Mexico in the game), improved old good F1RC engine (3000 polygons per vehicle, better feeling of the high speeds), improved driving physics, improved driving behavior and impairment features with collisions, some new views and cameras, you get penalties for making rally-moves (like cheating over the grass and so), pretty good AI (though aggressive racing is totally strange to them), a lot of options for customizing your car, six different game modes - Single race, Full race (with a qualification session before the race), Championship, Time attack, Private trials (create your own testing session under race conditions), and brand new scenario mode (you have to achieve certain goals), for PS2/GC players, there's six different game modes, ranging from the driving school to a complete championship and multiplayer up to 22 players via LAN/Internet (TCP/IP protocol).

Is it worth buying? Well, that depends what do you expect. If you are a casual player just looking for a racing game to have a fun with, I don't recommend you this game much. Since Racing Simulation 3 cannot compete with GP4 and F1 2002, that's rather a great game for hard-core gamers, those who liked F1RC.

System Requirements:
Minimum: Pentium II - 400 MHz, 128 Megabytes of RAM, Windows 98 SE, 100 MB of free HDD space, video cards* , some DirectX sound card
Recommended: Pentium III - 800 MHz, 128 Megabytes of RAM, Windows XP, 400 MB of free HDD space, 32MB video card
Ideal: AMD - 1.2GHz, 256 Megabytes of RAM, Windows XP SP1, 400 MB of free HDD space, 64MB video card

*GeForce1/2/3/4, /TNT2, ATI Radeon, Voodoo2,3,4,5, Matrox G200-555, KyroI/II, SIS 300/305, Intel Extreme, Savage4 Pro.
** unsupported Soundcard: Yamaha XG