For whatever reason, we’ve never seen the excellent? Motorsport Manager earlier on Xbox, so the arrival of the brand new Frontier Developments F1 manager series is a huge breath of fresh air for the genre, and we’ve been eagerly awaiting its arrival since its announcement earlier this year. The good news is that F1 manager 2022 is an impressive first entry with a very immersive 3D racing engine, enjoyable management tools and pretty much all the official F1 licenses you could hope for… but it also needs some balancing tweaks at launch.
The idea behind F1 Manager 2022 is that you take charge of an F1 team from the 2022 season onwards, and your job is to manage everything from the way your drivers perform on the track, to building and researching new ones. parts for your cars, even checking things like workforce development and the condition of your team’s facilities. All the non-racing stuff is accessible through a well-designed user interface quite reminiscent of the aforementioned Motorsport Manager, and it’s all easy enough to access with an Xbox controller without much fuss.
Race weekends are the obvious focus though, and that’s where you’ll be spending the majority of your time with F1 Manager 2022. It starts with the three practice sessions, which are boring in scope but keep you invested through a car setup mini-game where you constantly adjust sliders to increase your drivers’ confidence in their cars. Qualifying is quite simple, with the main strategy centering on when to send your drivers out onto the track, while the races themselves require you to manage pit strategies, aggressiveness, fuel load, ERS and various other aspects to try and gain an advantage over the competition .
Somewhat surprisingly, this is all handled through a graphically impressive 3D engine, and while it’s not quite at the level of a F1 22it’s amazing to see a management game with this kind of detail compared to Motorsport Manager and even a game like Football Manager 2022. Keep in mind it’s just a visualization – so you’ll get a few odd maneuvers and crashes at times, along with plenty of graphical imperfections and pop-in – but for the most part the 3D engine does a fantastic job of getting you through every race , while a top-down view of the track is also available if you want to speed up the action a bit.
We’ve found ourselves really immersed in the action, to the point where we’ll either punch ourselves in the air when we make a crucial overtake on the last lap, or put our heads in our hands when our star driver crashes into a barricade on a wet surface. The developers have clearly put the most effort into replicating the drama and excitement of a real F1 race day, and the amazing 3D engine is a major reason why it works so well.
So what are the main negatives now? Well, F1 Manager 2022 definitely needs some balancing improvements after its release. The type of tires you use, along with the tire wear itself, doesn’t seem to make much difference on the track right now. DRS also seems too impactful, with long DRS trains turning out to be quite common, and we’ve already come across an auto parts development exploit that can jack your stats much higher than you should be able to. The AI isn’t always as smart as it should be either, sometimes holding you back during qualifying and making strange choices about which tires to use in wet weather.
For a management game that prides itself on realism, these issues really need to be resolved pretty quickly. The good news is that it seems like they’re all pretty patchable, and Frontier has already reached out to the F1 Manager community on Discord and Reddit about their feedback and promises multiple updates in the days and weeks to come. There are some other things we’re not too keen on, like the inability to save mid-race (thankfully, Quick Resume works on Xbox Series X and Series S), but these are minor grumbles in the big picture.
Conclusion
For the first installment in a brand new series, Frontier has done a great job with F1 Manager 2022. The 3D racing engine is consistently engaging and visually stunning for a management game, the user interface is well designed and even the controls are easy enough to master. to get on Xbox. There are definitely some balance issues to iron out at launch, but if Frontier can add some pretty sharp updates, we’ll happily bump this review up to at least an 8/10.
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