In many ways, it’s a new era for the globe-trotting, engine-screaming circus that is Formula 1. It seems that the days of the Max Verstappen dominance are (perhaps) over, and a number of different drivers and Constructors have achieved a coveted race win or two during the 2024 Formula 1 World Championship. New regulations are on the horizon, new rookies are about to take their place at the top table of motorsport, and all signs point towards some of the best years in the sport’s recent history.
However, has such a revolution been demonstrated in F1 Manager 2024, the third in Frontier Developments’ now annual F1 management sim?
Well, and as befits the vast majority of iterative sports titles in gaming nowadays, the answer is no – we aren’t seeing a revolution. And yet, for any Formula 1 addicts, F1 Manager 2024 still has enough new and exciting features to make this one compelling title to whittle the hours away with.
Something that cannot be faulted of Frontier’s work here is their attention to detail. Not only is every element of your team’s finances, car development, driver signings and much more heavily tutorialised, ensuring even an F1 newbie could get up to speed relatively quickly, but the reams of data and tables that a player could become immersed in are rich.
The introduction of a new heli-cam, alongside existing helmet cam and other broadcast options, as well as the work of commentators David Croft and Karun Chandhok, ensures each session is captivating. Further still, the fact that Frontier have added 70,000 radio lines from both current F1 drivers, potential F1 drivers and staff members means that, whatever shenanigans happen on-track, there’s always a witty comment for Daniel Ricciardo to make, or a moan for Lewis Hamilton to have. Seriously, the attention to detail must be commended, especially because EA made such a song and dance about their comparingly pitiful number of radio lines for F1 24.
This extreme realism is only shattered when cars foray off the track, in terms of a spin or a crash. The frankly laughably inconceivable ways that cars jolt about when they crash can make things pretty jarring, and it was only in my first ever race where Valterri Bottas decided to re-join the track right in front of oncoming traffic, causing two retirees after just ten laps. I understand that drama has to happen, but come on, let’s make things realistic!
Other than the introduction of Mechanical Failures – where your cars may break down if you don’t take care of your parts and replenish elements of the car between races – there’s not an awful amount to be said about the core gameplay that hasn’t been uttered in our reviews for F1 Manager 2022 or F1 Manager 2023. Nobody likes to retread old ground, so it’s well worth a read of those to understand the basic fundamentals of F1 Manager 2024.
Whether it’s a short segment of a race you wish to partake in, or a full World Championship season to fight across, with each Practice, Qualifying and Race session in full, there are many ways to play your way through F1 Manager 2024.
As well as the typical Career Mode seeing you take control of an existing F1 team, and the brand-new Create A Team option that I’ll touch on later, many will find enjoyment in spades through the Race Replay mode, and especially the Exclusive Scenarios. As they were in previous iterations of the game, the latter of these provide bespoke fictional challenges to test different elements of your tactical nous. For example, with Carlos Sainz an early retiree, can you manage a minor mechanical fault on Charles Leclerc’s car, and ensure he takes the chequered flag first in Imola? Or perhaps you are looking to score some rare points for the Williams of Alex Albon and Logan Sargeant, as they manage their tyres around a rainy São Paulo?
These five Exclusive Scenarios are, in my opinion, the best way to play F1 Manager 2024, avoiding what can be a monotonous repetition of an entire race weekend, and replacing such with unique and exciting scenarios. It’s a crying shame, then, that they are only available as part of F1 Manager 2024’s Deluxe Edition – locking your best content behind a paywall isn’t the greatest look.
Instead, those with the Standard Edition can choose to replay individual races with the starting grid from the real-world equivalent race weekend, and are given an additional challenge by looking to best the points-total of a given team each race. Race Replay at least captures some of the excitement of the aforementioned Exclusive Scenarios, and is updated as the real-world season proceeds.
It’s all well and good taking the helm at the star-studded Red Bull, Ferrari and Mercedes, or perhaps attempting to return a fallen giant in Williams to glory, but that’s soooo last year. How about entering the grid as your own Constructor, and starting off at the bottom of the pack, with your own setup of fantasy talent? In F1 Manager 2024, for the first time, you can do just that with Create A Team.
Each created team will have different quality levels for the Car, Facilities, Drivers and Staff, with players having the option of manually selecting these, or taking on a more general challenge through selection of one of five ‘origins’. For example, taking up the top job as a ‘Hungry Newcomer’ will prove the hardest, whereas the ‘Technical Breakthrough’ origin gives you a top-of-the-range Car and Staff, with a need to invest heavily in Facilities and Drivers. Then pick a line-up of two real or generated drivers, a set of key staff, and it’s onto customisation.
After spending too much time creating your very own team colours with overalls, livery and helmets to boot, before you get on track you’ll also need to build a bespoke sponsorship portfolio, ensuring a steady cash flow without over-promising on-track targets. My advice? Stay well away from any brash energy drink company that nobody has heard of, and especially don’t touch Russian oil businesses. It didn’t work for Haas, and it won’t work for you!
Then it’s pretty much business as usual here, with the same UI and systems that spell out your finances, staff sentiment and driver market happenings as would be found if you choose to adopt one of the current real-world teams. As always, menus are easy to navigate, and you’ll never rue the fact you are using a controller over a mouse and keyboard. Create A Team should be the first port of call for returning players, whilst newbies may like to hone their craft with an existing Constructor before getting involved.
A wise man once said that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. And that is no more true than in the middle of battle, as your drivers bid to make it to the top step of the podium.
It’s only apt, therefore, that this is reflected in F1 Manager 2024 in the form of the brand-new Mentality System. Not only will your drivers’ performance race-to-race be affected by their own Mentality, but so too do your key staff away from the track. Lando Norris is failing to best the cocky up-start of Oscar Piastri on track? You’ll bet that his Mentality will drift into the Pessimistic zone, having a negative impact on future performances. Similarly, too many Mechanical Failures may see your Technical staff take a hit in the Mentality department, which could be resolved by investing in better staff facilities. All this is to say that, as well as having the fiercest competitors on the track, you’ll need a merry band of mentality monsters to see you through a whole 24-race season!
However, the Mentality system within F1 Manager 2024 sees the game commit a cardinal sin that is all too common in sports titles. For me, Mentality just seems to be another buzzword being thrown around to distinguish F1 Manager 2024 from its predecessors and is, in fact, more bark than bite when it comes to actual gameplay. Of course, only Frontier knows how Mentality is hard-coded in to affect performance, but I can’t seem to find how it does so in any meaningful way. It’s a shame, because it could otherwise be a fun metric to have to balance across your team.
It’s a dog eat dog world out there, and one way we’ve found to protect the biggest of talents away from prying eyes is through the super in-depth and uber-useful Affiliates system. In the real-world, the continuity of F1 teams is based largely on the ability to usher in a new generation of drivers as soon as your current racers get too old or crap to compete at the top level. As such, Affiliate programmes give you the opportunity to sign-up some of the brightest racing talent early-doors, as they ply their trade in Formula 2 and Formula 3, the feeder series of F1. In recent weeks, we’ve seen hot prospect Ollie Bearman given his first shot in F1 courtesy of the Haas team, and all signs point towards a Ferrari drive given his long-standing affiliation with the Prancing Horse. You too can develop an intricate web of Affiliate drivers, in order to keep the talent juices flowing for the years to come.
And with only 20 or 22 seats to fill, other teams will be vying to take drivers off of you. Making use of the new Dynamic Team AI system, F1 Manager 2024 will always have you on your toes as other outfits look to poach your current drivers and staff members. The need for youth is, therefore, paramount! And with hundreds of drivers to choose from, across F1, F2, F3 and F1 Academy – the ongoing women’s series – as well as those even further down in the youth ranks, there’s a real opportunity to find the diamonds in the rough, if you search for them. Frontier provides enough handy information regarding previous years’ results, current affiliations and the like, to make an informed choice.
Undoubtedly, the introduction of Create A Team makes F1 Manager 2024 the most rich iteration of the F1 management sim series to date, allowing any budding Team Principal to take their own team from nobody to somebody. And yet, given that most changes here are firmly in the aesthetic department, I can’t help but think I’ve seen this all before – first in 2022, and then this time last year. You know, that’s just how annual sports releases have worked, work now, and will work far into the future.
It’s not a bad thing, by any means, but unless you desperately need to compete against real Constructors with your own creation in F1 Manager 2024, and look forward to making use of the pretty shallow new systems being introduced to the game, you may as well stick with F1 Manager 2023.
