With a clear path to a yearly release with the name F1 Manager 22. Frontier Developments have spend the last couple of years intensively working on their first manager-game.
The official release date for the game is 30th August, and it will unlock at 14:00 UTC. However, pre-orders, or people buying the game between the 25th and 30th have been allowed to play the game early. This review is based on game version 1.5 – yes, the game is already in version 1.5 before the official release. Make of that what you will.
Please scroll through the following pages to read the official and extensive RaceDepartment review of F1 Manager 2022.
Have you played F1 Manager 2022 yourself? Please consider leaving a community rating here or leave your comments down below.
The official release date for the game is 30th August, and it will unlock at 14:00 UTC. However, pre-orders, or people buying the game between the 25th and 30th have been allowed to play the game early. This review is based on game version 1.5 – yes, the game is already in version 1.5 before the official release. Make of that what you will.
Please scroll through the following pages to read the official and extensive RaceDepartment review of F1 Manager 2022.
Have you played F1 Manager 2022 yourself? Please consider leaving a community rating here or leave your comments down below.
Presentation and Menus
There is no doubt that the game looks good. The UI is easy to navigate, to be honest, it look quite inspired by Motorsport Manager, but that is not a bad thing. The main menu is a bit sparse, but nothing more is needed. It’s also logical, things are where you expect them to be, in the correct submenus. It’s good, useful, without being groundbreaking.
However, in those sub-menus things start to get a bit more complicated. As seen on multiple bug reports for the game. Engine manufacturers doesn’t really show up anywhere in the game, not on the constructor name or anywhere else. This might be due to licensing and manufacturers who doesn’t want their partners and customers to be shown with a different engine. As there are no engine manufacturer negotiation in the game, nor any “Suppliers” tab when you look at the car. It is understandable that many believes that engine manufacturers aren't included in the game.
They are, but they are hidden under "Cars -> Car # -> Powertrain -> Engine - View Manufacturers". It's somewhat the same when you build or upgrade facilities. It says on the upgraded facility that you will get another engineer slot, or more scouts to scout for talent. The thing is, that doesn't actually happen. You need to go to the staff menu, and in to engineering team to be able to hire more staff. Not a big problem in the grand scheme, but it isn't explained, and it isn't a logical way to do it. In fact, under the skin of it, the various submenus within the submenus gets less and less self explanatory.
A very clean and good UI - here represented with Williams 2023 (season standings is from 2022).
When you do start your first game, and start it with the usual welcoming helper, you are getting a fairly good overview of the game, but it never goes deep. You get the basics, and that's it.
The in-race presentation of the game is really good. David Croft sounds like himself, and not like he is going off a script when he introduce you to the first race at Bahrain, and the on screen HUD is inspired by the TV graphics in real life. The game also looks very good graphically. There's some complaints about blurriness and the graphics being cartoony at times. I think this is on purpose to make it look smoother. In some camera views, I'd argue it looks as good as racing games. They've really nailed that one.
However, yet again the menus and what to click on isn't very intuitive, so it is a good thing you have a helper to guide you through the very basics yet again. However, I feel like it would've been better with a Motorsport Manager type of HUD when they aren't using the complete IRL package. There's just too much unnecessary stuff to click on to see what you want to see. The forecast is an example on this. Instead of just a simple button with forecast dropping down like in MM, you need to go in to the Strategy tab, then go to forecast. By doing that you can't do anything else. So if it has started raining when you look at it. You should pause the game, because by the time you have looked at the forecast it might be too late to pit, and you must go out of the different menus, and click on different menus to get to the pit now button. Oh, and it's not an simple "x" to go out, it's a back button. It is all clunky and involves a lot of clicking around.
You have commentating during the race, the race engineers and drivers actually talk with each other with proper soundbites, something which is really cool. However, after a few races you realize they say the same over and over again. It's a good idea, very fun and immersive at the start, but is pretty basic, and doesn't go very deep. This sadly is a recurring theme for the game.
Track information during a race. Weather forecast is a bit off, we are already well into rain-time.
However, in those sub-menus things start to get a bit more complicated. As seen on multiple bug reports for the game. Engine manufacturers doesn’t really show up anywhere in the game, not on the constructor name or anywhere else. This might be due to licensing and manufacturers who doesn’t want their partners and customers to be shown with a different engine. As there are no engine manufacturer negotiation in the game, nor any “Suppliers” tab when you look at the car. It is understandable that many believes that engine manufacturers aren't included in the game.
They are, but they are hidden under "Cars -> Car # -> Powertrain -> Engine - View Manufacturers". It's somewhat the same when you build or upgrade facilities. It says on the upgraded facility that you will get another engineer slot, or more scouts to scout for talent. The thing is, that doesn't actually happen. You need to go to the staff menu, and in to engineering team to be able to hire more staff. Not a big problem in the grand scheme, but it isn't explained, and it isn't a logical way to do it. In fact, under the skin of it, the various submenus within the submenus gets less and less self explanatory.
A very clean and good UI - here represented with Williams 2023 (season standings is from 2022).
When you do start your first game, and start it with the usual welcoming helper, you are getting a fairly good overview of the game, but it never goes deep. You get the basics, and that's it.
The in-race presentation of the game is really good. David Croft sounds like himself, and not like he is going off a script when he introduce you to the first race at Bahrain, and the on screen HUD is inspired by the TV graphics in real life. The game also looks very good graphically. There's some complaints about blurriness and the graphics being cartoony at times. I think this is on purpose to make it look smoother. In some camera views, I'd argue it looks as good as racing games. They've really nailed that one.
However, yet again the menus and what to click on isn't very intuitive, so it is a good thing you have a helper to guide you through the very basics yet again. However, I feel like it would've been better with a Motorsport Manager type of HUD when they aren't using the complete IRL package. There's just too much unnecessary stuff to click on to see what you want to see. The forecast is an example on this. Instead of just a simple button with forecast dropping down like in MM, you need to go in to the Strategy tab, then go to forecast. By doing that you can't do anything else. So if it has started raining when you look at it. You should pause the game, because by the time you have looked at the forecast it might be too late to pit, and you must go out of the different menus, and click on different menus to get to the pit now button. Oh, and it's not an simple "x" to go out, it's a back button. It is all clunky and involves a lot of clicking around.
You have commentating during the race, the race engineers and drivers actually talk with each other with proper soundbites, something which is really cool. However, after a few races you realize they say the same over and over again. It's a good idea, very fun and immersive at the start, but is pretty basic, and doesn't go very deep. This sadly is a recurring theme for the game.
Race Time
After you have had your hands held through the first race. The hands held so much that you are even forced to skip all free practice sessions, and thus you never get any guiding on how to do those the "right" way, again, we aren't going deep with things. It is time for race 2, and finally you have freedom to do what you want. It's time to do some free practice sessions and fix the setup of the cars.
Talk about being inspired by Motorsport Manager. To nail the setup it works in pretty much the exact same way, here you have five sliders you can adjust, which changes the five setup parameters in different ways. Then you need you driver to go on the track and drive so the bars of possible setup shrinks. It's just like Motorsport Manager, except, it's a lot more tedious. The drivers both need to do many laps to be able to give feedback on all 5 setup parameters. You can pit them when they are ready to give feedback on two out of 5, but then you go in quite blind. How many laps the drivers need depends on their race engineer, who's one of the skills are feedback. The better skill, the faster setup points are gained. Now, I've played as Williams, and I need 15 to 18 laps to get this done, basically half a free practice. During Free Practice your drivers also gain knowledge of the car parts, the higher knowledge gives better performance and they also have track acclimitisation. The problem is, even with constant driving in all three free practices, just interrupted by setup changes. They might not get 100% on the track knowledge. It's also all forgotten for the next year.
You may also use your reserve driver in FP1. If your reserve is a huge talent, this is the only way to boost the development. This does mean that the driver being replaced will not get 100% track knowledge, and will suffer compared to a driver who does it all. A reserve may not be replacing a race driver at any point during the season though, so it is more like a "talent seat" than reserve.
Setups inspired by Motorsport Manager.
Qualifying is way more straight forward, Q1, 2 and 3. We all know how that works, and there's nothing special to write about there, except you need to do your best to avoid traffic. This cannot be done while the car are on the track. There's no "keep distance" or "make a gap" order, so it must be timed right when you let the car out to the track. Do note that the sector times doesn't actually show any relative time, just their current splits, which is a shame.
The race is the main thing, both in real life and in any game. Before starting the session you need to setup a strategy, there are always three presets available, and you can create your own. You may also just choose a starting tyre and not do any strategies. The advantage of doing a strategy, is that you can choose how hard a driver will push on the different stints, and see the tyre life out from that, making it possible to plan pretty good. One issue is that drivers have different skills, some have high "smoothness" which means they can make the tyres last longer. However this doesn't show up on the strategy screen, even after doing three FP's and qualifyings, somehow the strategies are based solely on the predefined tyre life, not affected by the drivers abilities and the knownledge the team should have after three hours of practice. This makes the practice sessions even more tedious, as you spend a lot of time just for a setup bit and track knowedge, which both starts at 0 at every race and in every season. If you simulate practice sessions, you will never get a great or perfect setup. So you should do them to get maximum performance.
Anyway, after choosing a strategy and starting fuel, you can also change car parts to equal specification. You can put in a fresh engine for the race, maybe revert to an older gearbox etc. Though, there are no reason to revert to anything, as there's no development on engines, mapping or anything. When all is set and done, it's time for the race. Again Croft does his little bit, and you get to see the light turn red with their beep, before "it's lights out and away we go". Except Spa, where the lights stays on during the whole race.
The race session is in reality an ERS management session. While your orders to the drivers in terms of tyre usage and fuel usage do affect the speed and how long the tyres last, it is the ERS that is the key. That's what you use to get that extra boost to get close enough to make a pass, and what you use to pull away so the driver you just passed doesn't get DRS. Then it is time to recharge a bit, but not so much that the one you just passed gets within the DRS. You have full overview of all drivers, telemetry, laptimes and so on. You can check the forecast, the predicted tyrewear, fuel usage and everything you would ever need, and then some. Everthing is hidden in submenus, some more intuitive and easier than others, but they tend to get on top of other HUD elements. Even if you chose a strategy, you don't have to follow that, and can change it on the fly. Especially if it rains.
F1 Manager 2022 features Virtual Safety Car, Safety Car and also Red Flags. Together with rain and accidents not triggering anything, you need to be on your toes, and ready to react, check on expected tyre wear, see where you are predicted to get back out on to the track and what decision to take.
All sessions can have a speed from 1x to 16x. In 1x and 2x you can watch the broadcast of the race, from 4x to 16x you are forced to watch the map and the cars 2d dots. Regardless of speed, you have prompts that you can click on to see replays of incidents that have happened during the race and if chosen in the settings, the game will go back to normal speed if something major happens that affects one or both of your cars.
When the race ends, Croft and Karun Chandhok does their bit, and it's time to see the race results and standings. You can also jump to the data viewer and see all the tyre choices, reports and information for the race if you want.
Double stacking is possible, here in Singapore en route to Oscar Piastri finishing 10th and taking his first F1 points.
Talk about being inspired by Motorsport Manager. To nail the setup it works in pretty much the exact same way, here you have five sliders you can adjust, which changes the five setup parameters in different ways. Then you need you driver to go on the track and drive so the bars of possible setup shrinks. It's just like Motorsport Manager, except, it's a lot more tedious. The drivers both need to do many laps to be able to give feedback on all 5 setup parameters. You can pit them when they are ready to give feedback on two out of 5, but then you go in quite blind. How many laps the drivers need depends on their race engineer, who's one of the skills are feedback. The better skill, the faster setup points are gained. Now, I've played as Williams, and I need 15 to 18 laps to get this done, basically half a free practice. During Free Practice your drivers also gain knowledge of the car parts, the higher knowledge gives better performance and they also have track acclimitisation. The problem is, even with constant driving in all three free practices, just interrupted by setup changes. They might not get 100% on the track knowledge. It's also all forgotten for the next year.
You may also use your reserve driver in FP1. If your reserve is a huge talent, this is the only way to boost the development. This does mean that the driver being replaced will not get 100% track knowledge, and will suffer compared to a driver who does it all. A reserve may not be replacing a race driver at any point during the season though, so it is more like a "talent seat" than reserve.
Setups inspired by Motorsport Manager.
Qualifying is way more straight forward, Q1, 2 and 3. We all know how that works, and there's nothing special to write about there, except you need to do your best to avoid traffic. This cannot be done while the car are on the track. There's no "keep distance" or "make a gap" order, so it must be timed right when you let the car out to the track. Do note that the sector times doesn't actually show any relative time, just their current splits, which is a shame.
The race is the main thing, both in real life and in any game. Before starting the session you need to setup a strategy, there are always three presets available, and you can create your own. You may also just choose a starting tyre and not do any strategies. The advantage of doing a strategy, is that you can choose how hard a driver will push on the different stints, and see the tyre life out from that, making it possible to plan pretty good. One issue is that drivers have different skills, some have high "smoothness" which means they can make the tyres last longer. However this doesn't show up on the strategy screen, even after doing three FP's and qualifyings, somehow the strategies are based solely on the predefined tyre life, not affected by the drivers abilities and the knownledge the team should have after three hours of practice. This makes the practice sessions even more tedious, as you spend a lot of time just for a setup bit and track knowedge, which both starts at 0 at every race and in every season. If you simulate practice sessions, you will never get a great or perfect setup. So you should do them to get maximum performance.
Anyway, after choosing a strategy and starting fuel, you can also change car parts to equal specification. You can put in a fresh engine for the race, maybe revert to an older gearbox etc. Though, there are no reason to revert to anything, as there's no development on engines, mapping or anything. When all is set and done, it's time for the race. Again Croft does his little bit, and you get to see the light turn red with their beep, before "it's lights out and away we go". Except Spa, where the lights stays on during the whole race.
The race session is in reality an ERS management session. While your orders to the drivers in terms of tyre usage and fuel usage do affect the speed and how long the tyres last, it is the ERS that is the key. That's what you use to get that extra boost to get close enough to make a pass, and what you use to pull away so the driver you just passed doesn't get DRS. Then it is time to recharge a bit, but not so much that the one you just passed gets within the DRS. You have full overview of all drivers, telemetry, laptimes and so on. You can check the forecast, the predicted tyrewear, fuel usage and everything you would ever need, and then some. Everthing is hidden in submenus, some more intuitive and easier than others, but they tend to get on top of other HUD elements. Even if you chose a strategy, you don't have to follow that, and can change it on the fly. Especially if it rains.
F1 Manager 2022 features Virtual Safety Car, Safety Car and also Red Flags. Together with rain and accidents not triggering anything, you need to be on your toes, and ready to react, check on expected tyre wear, see where you are predicted to get back out on to the track and what decision to take.
All sessions can have a speed from 1x to 16x. In 1x and 2x you can watch the broadcast of the race, from 4x to 16x you are forced to watch the map and the cars 2d dots. Regardless of speed, you have prompts that you can click on to see replays of incidents that have happened during the race and if chosen in the settings, the game will go back to normal speed if something major happens that affects one or both of your cars.
When the race ends, Croft and Karun Chandhok does their bit, and it's time to see the race results and standings. You can also jump to the data viewer and see all the tyre choices, reports and information for the race if you want.
Double stacking is possible, here in Singapore en route to Oscar Piastri finishing 10th and taking his first F1 points.
Car & Driver Development
As expected in an F1 management game, the car development is crucial and a very important part of the game. This is a place where, you really can go in deep and make different focuses. You can spend time and develop the car in any direction you want. Do you want a car that will dominate Monaco, Hungaroring and slow tracks, that is possible. Do you want to do a Force India in 2009, and make a car that is extremely slippery and that will be fantastic at Spa, Monza and similar tracks. That's also a possibility. Depending on your facilities, you can have different numbers of projects going on at the same time.
After the rule changes for the next season is set, you can also start researching for the new car, to mitigate any potential loss of downforce due to the rule changes. You can work on the chassis, front and rear wing, suspension, sidepods and the floor, with different areas of the car they affect. What you can do is restricted by the number of project you can have running at the same time, your employees and also the rules which dictate how much CFD and Wind Tunnel time your team is allowed to have. The worse position in the WCC the previous year, the more time you are allowed. The allowed time is split into 6 periods during the year. You have to make a choice between focusing on this years car, or mitigating loss on next years car.
Low speed, high speed, slick? So many choices!
You can also throw money at the project to make it go faster, or to make your crew get more expertise to help them make even better components in the future. If it has just been that simple in real life.
In F1 Manager 2022 you can also develop your drivers. As opposed to virtually any other manager game in the world, you also control your drivers development. The drivers get weekly experience-points based on your facilities, and they get points during a race weekend. When they reach a certain threshold, you get a driver development point, which can be used to make a driver quicker, more consistent etc.
This is a curious choice in a manager-game. It might work out good, it might be a failure, but it is really worth the shot. It does seem like it would be hard to develop some of the worse rated drivers this way though, even if they have very high potential. It also looks like many of the F2 drivers are quicker than F1 drivers, but they all seem to suffer from the same inability to take care of their tyres. At least it's easy to know where to spend those development points!
After the rule changes for the next season is set, you can also start researching for the new car, to mitigate any potential loss of downforce due to the rule changes. You can work on the chassis, front and rear wing, suspension, sidepods and the floor, with different areas of the car they affect. What you can do is restricted by the number of project you can have running at the same time, your employees and also the rules which dictate how much CFD and Wind Tunnel time your team is allowed to have. The worse position in the WCC the previous year, the more time you are allowed. The allowed time is split into 6 periods during the year. You have to make a choice between focusing on this years car, or mitigating loss on next years car.
Low speed, high speed, slick? So many choices!
You can also throw money at the project to make it go faster, or to make your crew get more expertise to help them make even better components in the future. If it has just been that simple in real life.
In F1 Manager 2022 you can also develop your drivers. As opposed to virtually any other manager game in the world, you also control your drivers development. The drivers get weekly experience-points based on your facilities, and they get points during a race weekend. When they reach a certain threshold, you get a driver development point, which can be used to make a driver quicker, more consistent etc.
This is a curious choice in a manager-game. It might work out good, it might be a failure, but it is really worth the shot. It does seem like it would be hard to develop some of the worse rated drivers this way though, even if they have very high potential. It also looks like many of the F2 drivers are quicker than F1 drivers, but they all seem to suffer from the same inability to take care of their tyres. At least it's easy to know where to spend those development points!
The Off-Track Management
Much of what's been covered are often done by others in an F1 team, but what about the actual management part of the game, the negotiations and the smart tricks that make you and your team stand out. Well, they are there, to a certain degree. You negotiate contracts with drivers, chief designer, techincal director and the race engineers.
At the start of every new season (not the first), you also choose the sponsorship commitments. You may choose to invite the sponsors to the factory more often, have your drivers do more days with sponsors, media and so on. You get more money for it, but you also hamper the development, or even your drivers focus during the race weekend. At the start of every new season you also choose what engine to use. Of course you also manage your drivers during the race weekend. However, the whole management department is lacking a bit in the game, the negotiations with drivers and technical staff isn't very hard, it's not much work with it. There are almost no dilemmas to deal with, those that show up are small ones like sending your staff to a school for one day, it will halt all production, design and research, but you get 100k for it. Or throw a party. Nothing that relates to racing, the drivers, employees or anything. While your drivers and staff can get low morale, the only thing that fixes it is getting better results and a nicer looking HQ/facility. That's done by clicking a button.
The financial management of the game is almost non existent. I continuously upgraded all facilities and my car in my first season with Williams. Mid-season I even swapped Latifi for Piastri and had to pay a buyout fee. I was never in danger of not having money, or in any danger of hitting the cost cap. It's easy and simple.
You have no chance to work to convince drivers of staff to join your team either. They are interested, or they are not. As easy as that. So if I wanted to pay the buyout fee, I could sign Bottas, who were regularly competing for top 5's in Alfa, for my Williams in a mid season move. Why Bottas wanted to, I don't know. It also genuinely doesn't feel like your in-race management does much for the actual result.
But this is just the general overview, what's the good and bad with the game? Continue reading on the next page.
At the start of every new season (not the first), you also choose the sponsorship commitments. You may choose to invite the sponsors to the factory more often, have your drivers do more days with sponsors, media and so on. You get more money for it, but you also hamper the development, or even your drivers focus during the race weekend. At the start of every new season you also choose what engine to use. Of course you also manage your drivers during the race weekend. However, the whole management department is lacking a bit in the game, the negotiations with drivers and technical staff isn't very hard, it's not much work with it. There are almost no dilemmas to deal with, those that show up are small ones like sending your staff to a school for one day, it will halt all production, design and research, but you get 100k for it. Or throw a party. Nothing that relates to racing, the drivers, employees or anything. While your drivers and staff can get low morale, the only thing that fixes it is getting better results and a nicer looking HQ/facility. That's done by clicking a button.
The financial management of the game is almost non existent. I continuously upgraded all facilities and my car in my first season with Williams. Mid-season I even swapped Latifi for Piastri and had to pay a buyout fee. I was never in danger of not having money, or in any danger of hitting the cost cap. It's easy and simple.
You have no chance to work to convince drivers of staff to join your team either. They are interested, or they are not. As easy as that. So if I wanted to pay the buyout fee, I could sign Bottas, who were regularly competing for top 5's in Alfa, for my Williams in a mid season move. Why Bottas wanted to, I don't know. It also genuinely doesn't feel like your in-race management does much for the actual result.
But this is just the general overview, what's the good and bad with the game? Continue reading on the next page.
Goodies!
- Finally an officially licensed F1 management game, with F2 and F3 license. So not only F1 drivers, but also the likely replacement drivers will be real name drivers. We have to go back 25 years to find any F1 management game who had more than one real life driver outside said years drivers.
- The game looks good graphically. It looks a bit rough when you watch them drive, but that's the visual representation of the underlying coding and calculations.
- Cost cap and restricted CFD & Wind Tunnel time, makes it follow the actual F1 rules.
- The commentary, real life soundbites and look makes it possible to immerse yourself in it.
- Driver skill actually does matter, you can't just sign up your favorite kids from F3 to Ferrari or Red Bull and start winning.
- Cars do matter, sign Hamilton and Verstappen to Williams, and it wouldn't be victories all around either. Charles Leclerc would've been very happy though.
- Extensive car development with freedom to steer the development direction, and you can see the results on the track.
- Car knowledge, meaning that if you put on new bits, or change a driver mid season, the driver with the new bits, or the new driver, will have to get used to your car before being able to perform at his or her best.
- Rule changes, there are rule changes in the game, which affect the cars, but also points scoring. In my Williams-game, both points for pole position and double points in the last race got the majority of the votes, and got included in to 2023.
- VSC, SC and Red Flags!
- The presentation of the game looks very good.
Baddies, Bugs and Issues
- Blue flag & Passing zones. At the moment it looks like the game have pre-defined passing zones on all tracks. Meaning if you are about to lap a car, or coming across a car with damage outside these passing zones, your driver will simply just slow down and lose time. This is also why it is important to avoid traffic during qualifying.
- Lapped cars do not unlap themselves. Insert Abu Dhabi and Michael Masi meme here... But that's a rule they don't have in the game. The biggest issue with this isn't a rule they don't have in the game it is....
- Blue flag issues. Drivers will never unlap themselves, and if they get caught, they slow down and move to the side as fast as they can. That's an extra problem after SC, where there might be many lapped cars, which starts to slow down, then you have the lack of passing zones and it makes it all feel pointless when they queue up like rush hour on a highway.
- Wet tyres are dominant in wet conditions. Even when it's far way from wet conditions, they are just as fast as Inters.
- Tyre temperatures are mostly irrelevant, it makes the tyres wear a bit quicker, but it's just as fast.
- Tyre deltas are non-existent, which means that with little effect of tyre temps, and the fact that the tyres only start to lose performance from 30% and down, your in-race management doesn't have that much of an effect.
- Fuel deltas are fluctuating a lot. Frontier have said that this is intended, it is based on DRS, traffic, pushing etc., however, it's clearly not working as intended.
- If you change your gearbox mid race weekend, the new one will inherit the wear of the old one.
- When you sign new drivers or staff, they join immediately. There is no "next year" signings, not really a good one for a manager game.
- No way to replace your race driver with the reserve for a race or two, you can sign the reserve to a race contract, but that immediately fires the race driver.
- They are missing sprint races completely.
- No option to turn off commentary, cut-scenes etc.
- While immersive and fun at first, there is a severe lack of variety. 7 incidents at Imola, and all incidents was in the same corner, and happened the exact same way. With different outcomes though, but they looked exactly the same, all of them. I also got praised for an "excellent qualifying" from both Croft and Chandhok. I was 19th and 20th. It just takes time, and more often than not it looks bad.
- Nothing happens between seasons, you don't have any say in next years car, you don't attend pre-season testing, nothing, no ceremony either, it just skips through. The game is mostly about the race weekends and deciding the development focus of the car, while trying to add immersive details.
- However, due to the issues mentioned above, much of what you do in the races are decided on random issues with the game. Strategies doesn't matter much at the moment, and you end up clicking a lot of buttons without much actually happening. There's no technical failures during the races, just driver errors either.
- And while they try to make it immersive, there is no way to look up the starting grid of a race. Even when over half the grid have grid penalties, you are only told where your two drivers start, there is literally no way to see the final starting grid...
- There's no sponsorship negotiation. So no sponsor changes or anything. The payments are solely based on last years performance and how much time you force your team to give up.
- Only the 20 race drivers from 2022 have been properly modeled in the game, which breaks the immersion they are trying to create, they also lack driver stats, only last 5 years are shown, and even that is not including everything.
Conclusion
It is a manager game, it looks good and on the surface it looks like a deep and enthrilling experience. In reality it is a tiny bit different.
While it is the first attempt from Frontier to make an F1 management game, it feels very shallow. There's little to do, there's little consequences from what you do, there's not much management involved. While it starts out really fun, the dies down due to the multitude of bugs and issues, it then grows on you a bit after you get to know some of the quirks of the game.
I am however unsure on the replayability of the game, while all games are repetitive to a certain degree, this feels even more repetitive. There is nothing that jumps out and can change the fortune of the season, nothing that really changes from play-through 1 to play-through 2. Where you in other management games have injuries to athletes, you have transfers etc. That doesn't happen here.
In Motorsport Manager you had dilemmas, driver traits, things that could be different from each time you played, that just doesn't happen in F1 Manager 22. The hope is that the can iron out the issue in the game, maybe be able to add a feature or two in the coming months, and build on it to make F1 Manager 23 a way more complete experience. As it is right now, it's a game without too much depth to it.
Review based on F1 Manager 22 v1.5 - pre official release.
While it is the first attempt from Frontier to make an F1 management game, it feels very shallow. There's little to do, there's little consequences from what you do, there's not much management involved. While it starts out really fun, the dies down due to the multitude of bugs and issues, it then grows on you a bit after you get to know some of the quirks of the game.
I am however unsure on the replayability of the game, while all games are repetitive to a certain degree, this feels even more repetitive. There is nothing that jumps out and can change the fortune of the season, nothing that really changes from play-through 1 to play-through 2. Where you in other management games have injuries to athletes, you have transfers etc. That doesn't happen here.
In Motorsport Manager you had dilemmas, driver traits, things that could be different from each time you played, that just doesn't happen in F1 Manager 22. The hope is that the can iron out the issue in the game, maybe be able to add a feature or two in the coming months, and build on it to make F1 Manager 23 a way more complete experience. As it is right now, it's a game without too much depth to it.
Review based on F1 Manager 22 v1.5 - pre official release.
