F1 Manager 2024 review: Third time’s the charm

After F1 Manager 2022’s encouraging start, F1 Manager 2023 was the musical equivalent of the ‘difficult second album’, lacking genuine innovation to justify its price tag. 

With F1 Manager 2024 promising more new features and the much-requested ability to create your own team, Frontier Developments’ third attempt at simulating the work of a Formula 1 Team Principal needs to deliver on its early promise. 

To continue the music analogy, is F1 Manager 2024 more ‘OK Computer’ than ‘Be Here Now’?* 

Read on to find out.

No Surprises

Loading up for the first time, one can see that ’24’s presentation remains largely unchanged from its two predecessors. It features the same music, menu graphics and layout as previous iterations but its UI is unfussy and simple to navigate. As the adage goes, ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’.

New for ‘24 is the ability to participate in Career mode with your own team, designing its livery, selecting an origin story and picking sponsors.

You can still choose one of the 10 original F1 teams but many players will opt for the extra freedom and customisation offered by the new ‘Create a Team’ mode (and it’s also an excellent way to add Andretti to the grid). The Deluxe Edition of the game adds more customisation options, including classic livery templates.

Race Replays and Exclusive Scenarios – 23’s most novel and engaging features – make a welcome return in ‘24, offering unique vignettes of F1 racing, with players assigned performance targets inside restrictive scenarios.

The Abu Dhabi Exclusive Scenario, for example, sees every team’s main drivers out of action and replaced by reserves. It’s an interesting diversion and provides a bite-size slice of F1 Manager gameplay minus all the backroom admin.

Fitter Happier

Young driver programmes like the Red Bull Driver Academy make their debut in ‘24. This means you too can develop some of the best emerging talent around before binning them unceremoniously in favour of jaded thirty-somethings. Realism.

It’s a neat way to keep a close eye on the next generation, which for the first time includes real drivers from the F1 Academy.

Its most important function, however, is to prevent your rivals from poaching the best youngsters… or that could just be my curmudgeonly playstyle.

The new ‘Mentality Hub’ system covers all aspects of your staff’s happiness and job satisfaction, including intra-team relationships. It’s an evolutionary system, and while it’s much more comprehensive than before it’s fairly simple to understand. 

Good results on track boost team morale which in turn improves the affinity between staff members, buffing their stats.

Better stats and high morale equals better race performances, and the virtuous cycle continues. Signing too many new staff members at once can be quite destabilising, however, so it’s best to make gradual changes.

Of course, this works both ways, so it’s more important than ever to ensure you get on top of car development and gain some positive results as soon as possible.

Car part R&D in ‘24 is similar to previous incarnations in this respect, but I found that after bolting on a couple of new parts I was able to transform my middling Aston Martin outfit into frontrunners. Success came a little too easily, in other words, which is something Frontier may want to address.

A new focus on mechanical failures had been promised for ‘24, but during my playthrough I didn’t experience a single instance.

However, being an F1 Manager veteran, I always managed my cars’ engine and tyre temperatures and swapped out faulty car parts regularly, which could explain this. Punctures are common, though, forcing you to look after your Pirellis over a stint.

Stand By Me

Despite improvements across the board, ‘24 still retains a few bugs, including the occasional game freeze in our pre-release test sessions. The way cars battle on-track has also improved but they still look a little awkward at times, which can be immersion-breaking.

Players are more likely to have races on 16x speed for the most part, so this shouldn’t detract from the gameplay too much. 

On the other hand, I encountered a major bug when negotiating with prospective staff, where counter-offers led to the complete breakdown of talks, despite there being plenty of time to negotiate. The error has been reported to Frontier and will likely be fixed in a post-release hotfix.

I also found that it’s vital to have your staff locked into contracts well before the end of the season. The game prevents you from advancing until vital staff positions are filled, leading me to panic buy from the F1 personnel bargain bin.

It felt like there wasn’t sufficient warning my staff were about to be made free agents and it’s nearly impossible to re-sign them – or anyone of decent ability – at the year’s conclusion.

Some odd things happened during my career mode playthrough too, with Logan Sargeant and Yuki Tsunoda emerging as podium contenders towards the end of the year, even usurping Max Verstappen on pace. I’m not saying it’s impossible but come on.

Cars can overheat under Safety Car conditions and your race engineer-to-driver conversations can be occasionally nonsensical: “Inters are done,” he said, while my medium slicks were absolutely fine. These are minor quirks, however.

D’You Know What I Mean?

The game still looks ok, with in-race action relying heavily on motion blur, but there hasn’t been a huge step forward in terms of visuals. However, the long-standing Monaco tunnel bug (rain appeared inside and outside the tunnel in previous F1 Manager games) has been fixed and drivers no longer wear gloves on the podium (on PC at least), so that’s some progress at least. 

The new Helicam adds a Motorsport Manager-style method of following the action too, which is perhaps the best way to watch unfolding battles.

One of the biggest criticisms of previous games was how long it took to complete a race weekend. Thankfully, Frontier has addressed this by allowing players to simulate races.

From my experience, this works well, with my cars generally qualifying and finishing where they should be based on their stats. You still can’t skip to the end of sessions, however.

Let Down?

F1 Manager 2024‘s improvements are more evolution than revolution but it provides the best F1 Manager experience yet. The game has much more replayability this time around and I’m genuinely looking forward to starting a new season with another custom team, which is a positive sign.

Its low price of £29.99 / $34.99 / €34.99 goes some way to making it an attractive prospect for both returning players and those who skipped ‘23 too, with its Nintendo Switch bow offering the most convenient way to play.

The new ‘Create a Team’ mode is an immediate highlight; offering a much-requested feature to the series, while the expanded ‘Mentality Hub’ mechanic and young driver programmes add extra layers to team management (and extra stress).

Despite some bugs and forgiving gameplay, F1 Manager 2024 is perhaps the game ‘23 should have been: it provides an authentic F1 experience with engaging gameplay, without feeling too bloated. 

In other words, it’s more ‘Paranoid Android’ than ‘All Around the World’,** and that’s a good thing.

F1 Manager 2024’s Standard Edition releases on the 23rd of July for PC, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S, priced at £29.99 / $34.99 / €34.99. A Deluxe Edition featuring five custom Race Replay Scenarios, five ‘classically inspired’ liveries for Create a Team and a 10% pre-order discount is also available for £35.99 / $40.49 / €40.49.

*apologies to anyone under the age of 35

**and again

Developer	Frontier Developments
Release date	23rd July 2024
Available platforms	PC, Nintendo Switch, PS4, PS5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S
Version/s tested	PC
Best played with	Mouse and keyboard

Full disclosure: A game code was provided by the developers for review purposes. Here is our review policy.