F1® Manager 2022

My spreadsheet instincts lit up the moment I saw F1 Manager 2022's resource allocation screen: staff contracts, factory upgrades, car component manufacture queues, sponsor appeasement, driver fitness targets, all running concurrently across a 23-race calendar. Frontier Developments, the studio behind Planet Coaster, has taken its tycoon management DNA and bolted it to the one sport where decision latency actually kills you. The result is the most structurally ambitious F1 management game released in over twenty years, and also one of the most frustrating first entries in recent memory. The off-track loop is genuinely strong. Between race weekends you are juggling chassis development across multiple component slots, deciding whether to rush a floor upgrade in time for Silverstone or bank the manufacturing time for a more impactful power unit spec. Hiring and staffing your design department feeds directly into R&D speed, and the budget tension of choosing between a top-tier driver contract and a wind-tunnel expansion is exactly the kind of long-horizon thinking that strategy fans chase. On race day, control over fuel load, ERS deployment modes, tyre push level, and pit call timing gives you more levers than most sim-adjacent games bother to model. Dynamic weather, safety car windows, and red flags all create genuine fork-in-the-road moments where smart micro-management can gain three positions on a single lap. The game even uses real broadcast-style TV graphics and team radio voice clips, which does more for immersion than you might expect. The problems cluster in two specific places. First, the race AI is noticeably weak. Opposing strategists rarely deviate from predictable scripts, DRS trains form early and stretch absurdly long, and safety car restarts expose the kind of robotic decision-making that should be generating chaos instead of a procession. Crashes are barely animated, cars simply stopping on track rather than producing the visceral incidents that would test your reactions. Second, and harder to forgive at this point: Frontier stopped issuing significant gameplay patches just two months after launch, leaving known issues around tyre compound balance, AI behaviour under virtual safety cars, and difficulty tuning unresolved. The community flagged all of these loudly and was largely told to wait for F1 Manager 2023. That decision explains the Mixed Steam review score far better than the underlying game design does. Who should still care? F1 fans who want to understand why Williams cannot simply build a faster car, and anyone coming from Motorsport Manager who wants an official licence and a visual upgrade. The tutorial covers the basics competently; the learning curve past that is steep but the decisions themselves are readable if you take the time to learn what each stat drives. Newcomers to the genre who are not already invested in Formula 1 as a sport will find the thin race spectacle and the jargon-heavy menus a barrier that the tutorial does not fully clear. Keyboard and mouse is strongly recommended over a controller, where the menu navigation becomes noticeably clumsy. As a live purchase today, F1 Manager 2022 sits in an awkward spot. F1 Manager 2023 and subsequent entries addressed many of its core weaknesses. If you can find this at a significant discount and you missed the series entirely, it is a worthwhile look at how Frontier built the foundation. At anything close to full price, the later entries are better value. Treat this one as an archived first season, interesting for context, limited as a destination.

Diego · Scout Team

Strategy & simulation

Be the first to comment on F1® Manager 2022.