Codemasters is bringing their F1 racing series to the iPhone with F1 2009. Set for release later this month, the game brings fast pasted Formula One racing to your portable device. I’ve been playing around with an early build of the game and so far I’m mostly impressed. Wanna find out more? You know what to do.

You get to take the wheel as one of twenty drivers from various racing teams and speed your way across 17 officially licensed tracks used on the Formula One racing circuit. There are two main game modes, Time Trial and Endurance, where you can choose how many laps you want to run to try and go for the best time. Unfortunately, there’s no career mode, so it’s just quick play type racing. There is also no real discernible difference between the cars or drivers, so pick at your leisure.

The controls are pretty good utilizing the iPhone accelerometer for turns. You use on-screen accelerator and brake pedals to control speed, with an additional K.E.R.S. (Kinetic Energy Recovery System) button that gives you a big speed boost for a short period of time. It’s like hitting a Nitrous button in Need for Speed. You can tweak the sensitivity of the controls, but what I didn’t like was being unable to set your iPhone orientation at the pause screen. The game calibrates itself before each race, but a lot of times I would move a bit or want to lay down during an Endurance race and would have liked to be able to compensate. Hopefully this can be added in before the game ships.

No pricing has been announced yet for F1 2009, but based on what I’ve played, it’s a solid racer, especially for fans of Formula One. I would have liked to see a bit more variability between the car manufactures and drivers and some sort of career mode, but all in all, it’s a fun racing game. We’ll have to see how the final game plays out, but for now, I’d keep this one on your radar.