“F1 Manager 24” reviewed – Does Create-a-Team make for a must-buy? · RaceFans
After over a year of negotiating, politicking and shots fired through passive aggressive press statements, the question of which of the two new teams approved by the FIA will get the honour of joining the F1 grid has been decided.
Shockingly, Andretti Global have missed out. Instead, FOM stuns the motorsport world by accepting the entry of unknown Australian outfit Redback Racing to become the 11th Formula 1 team.
Despite a minimal budget of only $10 million, a barely functional factory, no simulator, a technical team made up of ex-Formula 2 engineers, Renault power units purchased for cheap in exchange for a race seat for Alpine junior Jack Doohan and controversial team principal Will Wood, whose only prior F1 experience was running Williams into the ground in 2022, FOM believe for some inexplicable reason that this second-rate squad will “add more value” to Formula 1 than one of IndyCar’s most successful squads.
Heading into the opening round of the 2024 season in Bahrain, the question on everyone’s lips in the paddock is not whether Red Bull can be caught, but if Redback Racing can even survive their first season…
It’s hard to believe, but Frontier Developments’ F1 Manager series – the first officially licensed F1 management simulation game for PC and console for two decades – is now on its third entry.
Up to now, RaceFans has enjoyed what the franchise has had to offer. Especially as it has filled a gaping hole in the F1 gaming market while has been lacking for so long.
But with the third entry, ‘F1 Manager 24’, the initial contract with FOM for three initial entries has been fulfilled. Although there has been no word yet about whether or not the series will continue beyond this latest edition, the prospects of renewal look more ‘Kevin Magnussen‘ than ‘Lance Stroll’ at this stage.
If F1 Manager 24 is the final entry in this series, how does this third incarnation measure up – especially for players who already own the 2022 or 2023 editions of the game?
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Evolving the Formula
If you have not yet played any of the previous F1 Manager games, F1 Manager 24 shares much in common with its two predecessors. Giving players the opportunity to virtually step into the shoes of a team principal, the game allows you to make key off-track decisions over driver contracts, car development, factory facility maintenance, sponsorship and budget cap expenditure, while also putting you on the pit wall during race weekends to make all the vital decisions that affect your team’s prospects on track.
Although the series may not have quite the same depth of options and micromanagement when it comes to off-track matters as the old Grand Prix Manager games of the nineties, the series does provide an attractive, accessible form of management that can be enjoyed on a controller on console just as much as it can on PC. As with 2023, F1 Manager 24 also allows players to use a keyboard and mouse on console too if they prefer.
While there are some changes and enhancements, the core gameplay loop in F1 Manager 24 is fundamentally the same as that of its predecessors. Anyone who has played F1 Manager 23 or dabbled with the first game in 2022 and skipped last years will find themselves the various screens and processes very familiar.
One of the series’ greatest strengths has been how authentic is in its recreation of the world of Formula 1. All of the real F1 race engineers, heads of aero and sporting directors are in the game alongside all 20 drivers and many affiliated reserve drivers, such as Pato O’Ward and Mick Schumacher. The entire F2 and F3 championships, teams and personnel are also present, meaning that drivers such as Luke Browning and Leonardo Fornaroli may end up breaking into Formula 1 in later seasons – either through AI teams hiring them or by you hiring them for your own team.
The Unreal-based graphics engine is attractive, colourful and the TV-style presentation and ability to select from multiple camera angles to follow your drivers – including a handful of new angles for this new game, such as helicam – puts the F1 Manager series on its own as the best a motorsport management game has ever looked.
But when it comes to gameplay – the most important element of the game after all – what is new for this year’s game?
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The Real Minardi Simulator
When the F1 Manager franchise was first announced, perhaps the single most desired feature was to have the ability to create an entirely original 11th team and bring them onto the F1 grid alongside the existing outfits. At the third time of asking, Frontier have delivered.
Create-a-Team mode is the major new addition to the series for 2024 and it is exactly what the franchise needed. While there’s plenty of fun in bringing Williams back to the front of the field or taking the reins in Maranello and showing the Scuderia how it is supposed to be done, there is nothing like the sense of ownership you have in designing and building up a team that is entirely your own.
Much like MyTeam in EA’s F1 game, Create-a-Team allows you to name your team, design a livery and logo and choose from one of five different backstories for your team that help offer different scenarios to decide what kind of challenge you want for your new constructor. In a welcome move, you can even choose to completely customise your team’s starting budget, facility levels and driver line-up to whatever you choose, allowing you to create a true ‘minnow’ team like Minardi or HRT.
It’s great to report that the livery, emblem and driver suit design editors are far superior than anything that has been offered in Codemasters’ F1 game series. The liveries offered here are much more believable than anything offered in the most recent F1 games. Those who purchase the deluxe edition also receive several liveries inspired by some of the most famous examples in the sport’s history.
While it is never the same as being able to import your own logo made in Photoshop, you will likely be able to make your team’s visual identity look to your satisfaction with the tools available. And while you cannot change your team’s name after your mode starts, you can edit your team’s visual branding at any time outside of a race weekend.
If you’re going to attempt to start with the lowest possible settings for your created team, be warned – it can be an exercise in misery to start off with. When money is tight and you gradually run low on parts with a decreasing budget to pay for them because your rookie team mate crashes twice in a weekend, it is genuinely stressful.
The new ‘mentality’ system for this year means all your major personnel will have a level of happiness with your team and you, based on factors such as your on track success or the strength of your facilities. When you’re qualifying last and finishing last race after race in year one, it’s very hard to keep morale high.
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Other additions
To be expected, the sprint race format has once again been amended to reflect this year’s revised approach. Sprint qualifying now takes place on Friday afternoons with the sprint race on Saturday mornings before the grand prix qualifying session on a Saturday afternoon.
While you cannot opt out of sprint races – sadly – you at least now have the ability to completely simulate them or any session you do not wish to sit through in this year’s game, including races. If you’re just trying to get through to the end of the season and kick-start your new campaign, this is naturally a good way to reduce the tedium at the end of a long year. But chances are that most players will prefer to keep the control available by taking on sessions in real-time.
Sponsorship is more involved in this edition. You have a selection of title sponsors to choose from, each with different pay out levels or reward tiers, depending on if you want a sponsor offering more up front cash or more performance-based incentives. As well as a reserve driver, you can now sign prospective drivers as affiliates who will effectively form part of your junior team. You can keep better track of them through their progression in F2 and F3, before offering them Friday practice runs and eventually offering them race seats.
To add a welcome touch of peril to race weekends, mechanical failures are now an important factor you and your AI rival teams must contend with. Minor faults can develop, while worn power units or gearboxes could fail completely. You’ll see ‘highlights’ of rival drivers suffering ‘mechanical faults’ during races, but the game does not exactly offer much to suggest what it is that the driver is suffering from, which is amusingly uninformative.
Back again for 2024 is the Race Moments mode, which takes specific scenarios inspired by real life events during races or original inventions and challenges you to achieve set targets, such as finishing a race in a certain position despite developing a fault late in the race. This kind of more casual, ‘bite sized’ racing action is a staple of sports management games but while it is great to see it return from last year’s game, the real fun and immersion is to be had from the core management mode.
In a very welcome move, F1 Manager 24 is also the first entry to be playable on Nintendo Switch. Although RaceFans was not able to test the Switch version, it will include the full experience as present on its fellow consoles and PC. The prospect of being able to play this game on the go is incredibly appealing as the nature of the game renders this ideal for playing on a long-haul flight or coach journey.
Deserving on a place on the pit wall?
Although there are many welcome improvements to the series for this third time around, it is hard not to ignore how similar the core experience will feel to those who have already played and enjoyed the previous entries up to now. While Create-a-Team is the series at its best, it’s going to be difficult for experienced players to keep that excitement when they’re faced with the same loop of sending cars out in practice sessions until their feedback gauge is fully filled, then tinkering with the car set-up until all the sliders are sitting in the correct position, then sending the cars back out to repeat the process – just as you did in the last two games.
There’s also the fact that car development can be a little too effective. When designing new parts, the gains that the game tells you that you will get from a new wing, underfloor or sidepod design are the gains you will get. There’s no jeopardy that the upgrades will fail or not deliver the benefits as expected. With the benefit of more wind tunnel time for lowly teams, smart use of developing parts is clearly the most effective way to start climbing up the grid over a season.
If you were disappointed by the first two games when it came to the depth of the systems and the sim engine powering the outcomes and results of the game, that will also be fundamentally unchanged for 2024. But if you’re feeling reluctant about being asked to drop another £45 for his newest edition, you don’t have worry. This new entry has seen its price reduced to just £30 for the standard edition and £40 for the deluxe.
In a year when the official F1 racing game was particularly underwhelming for a variety of reasons, it’s actually a pleasant surprise to see F1 Manager make much bigger steps forward as a franchise than it did last year. While this third entry might not replace Grand Prix Manager 2 or Grand Prix World or even Motorsport Manager as many players’ favourite F1 management game ever, it feels like this third F1 Manager title will make players happier than its two older siblings. And at £30, this is far, far better value for money than what last year’s game offered at launch.
If this is the end of the road for F1 Manager, it will truly be a shame. But at least this third and final entry will finish the franchise on a high note.
RaceFans rating
F1 Manager 24
Platform(s): PS4/5 Xbox Series S|X, Switch, Steam, EGS
Developer: Frontier Developments
Publisher: Frontier Developments
Released: Tuesday 23rd July
Price: £29.99 (Deluxe Edition: £39.99)
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