Last week I went to the Belgian Grand Prix at Spa-Francorchamps. And you can see the pictures I took to provie it in the gallery below. I came back from one of the world’s best circuits after three days’ camping very happy (go Lewis!), very tired and very wet, but with my appetite even more whet (yes you do spell whet like that, even if it does look like a silly word when it’s written down).

I’m whet, not wet, in anticipation of Codemasters’ F1 2010, and having already been very excited about the game which is released in less than three weeks (September 24th), seeing real F1 cars roaring through the Ardennes forest made me want to have a go myself even more.

At the age of 27 and with no track record in any form of real-life motorsport I have to admit my chances of obtaining an F1 drive are now looking slim (however I would like to confirm my availability if any team bosses are reading) and it looks far more likely that I might just have to get good at F1 on the PS3, and I was excited to find that I returned from Belgium to the availability of new in-game footage available on video.

So how realistic is the game compared to real life? Well it looks pretty good. Conveniently someone has made this video putting some F1 2010 gameplay footage of Jenson Button’s virtual 2010 McLaren against some real-life footage of Heikki Kovalainen in the 2009 car – so you can judge the comparison for yourself. Someone else has done the same thing (here) for Sebastien Buemi’s Toro Rosso lapping around a drenched Monza in against Kimi Raikkonen’s Ferrari doing it for real in 2008. Apart from the gorgeous-looking weather effects the game looks lovely. The cars look well balanced handling-wise and there appears to be an accurate fine line between maximum speed and total disaster.

Obviously we have no way of knowing what difficulty settings the virtual racers were using or any idea of their own skill levels, but my hopes remain high. The game isn’t going to exhilarate me in the same way as watching cars fly up Eau Rouge for real but if it can recreate just a little bit of that excitement I’ll be a happy man – and a much drier one too.

If you haven’t pre-ordered F1 2010 yet then: