Last year, we praised F1 Manager 23 for the addition of “race replays,” a new game mode that let players relive key moments from the 2023 season and, perhaps, change the course of history through their managerial prowess. These challenge scenarios shook up the base game play of the F1 Manager franchise—a trend we hoped developer Frontier Developments would continue with future installments.
While we perhaps can not take all of the credit, we were certainly chuffed to bits when we loaded up F1 Manager 24, this year’s installment in the official Formula One management simulator series, and discovered “Create A Team” mode. The addition of a mode where players can not only build their own racing empire from the ground up, but also adjust the parameters of their starting position for additional challenges, is an inspired addition to the series that makes F1 Manager 24 worth the purchase.
Before we get knee-deep in the details (which is exceedingly easy to do in this game) let’s take a moment for the uninitiated. F1 Manager is a simulation series that puts players not behind the wheel of an F1 machine, but in the tower issuing orders to drivers and in the garage choosing what aspects of your car to have your engineering team develop before race day. The actual driving is done by virtual drivers, though you’ll be able to see the action up close through a system of camera views. The joy to be found here is making the calls ahead of race day to achieve success for your team. It’s cerebral. It’s strategic. And until F1 Manager 24 it was largely about reliving the glory of a given season in a career mode that had you choosing an actual F1 team.
F1 Manager 24 changes all of that with Create a Team mode. Six origins await those who would take up the mantle of team principal, each with different parameters to alter the challenges faced by you, the team principal. “Your Story” lets you freely choose the quality of your car, your facilities, drivers, and staff. If you want to know what it feels like to manage a team through the ‘24 season with the best of everything, this is the mode for you. Other origins change up the challenge with pre-prescribed starting values. The “Technical Breakthrough” origin starts you with a high-level car and excellent staff, but a limited budget. “Hungry Newcomer,” gives you a bit more budget but fairly low starting stats all around, making for a greater challenge.
Once a starting scenario is selected, players get to choose their drivers, staff members, and develop their own team branding. Be prepared to lose hours in the logo builder.
And then it’s off to the races, er…by way of several dashboards worth of pre-race day decisions to make. And it is here too that small but interesting changes to the formula emerge such as the mentality system that asks you to keep track of the needs and desires of your drivers and staff, less they be poached by a rival team. Sure, various sponsorship activities will bring funding to your operation, but at what morale cost to your drivers? And once the requisite time spent choosing sponsorship options, researching new tech, and building new facilities has commenced, race day arrives. This time around, F1 Manager introduces mechanical failures that threaten to pit your car and give principals a challenge to respond to in real time.
While these small changes to the core game play do provide additional depth to F1 Manager’s established formula, they are the type of small tweaks that are to be expected from any video game series with annual installments. If you’re still ringing all the managerial goodness out of F1 Manager 23, a mentality system may not be worth putting up the purchase price of a new game.
The real game-changer here is the added immersion of “Create a Team” mode which elevates the F1 team principal fantasy to a level of personal involvement that previous editions of the game sorely lack. While we appreciate the chance to relive an F1 season from the perspective of our favorite racing teams, creating our own team, naming them, and watching them achieve victory or suffer defeat while wearing the logo that we spent ages designing means a little bit more.
F1 Manager 2024 is currently available for PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Playstation 4, and PlayStation 5.
For this review, Podium Life received a digital review copy of F1 Manager 2024 for the PlayStation 5.
