If you’re the type of person that likes complicating and deconstructing your life, then Frontier Developments have a game for you, especially if you’re an F1 fan. F1 Manager 2023 is the next step for those who adore Codemasters’ racing gem F1 2023. While the racing sim puts you behind the wheel and lets you experience first-hand what it’s like to be an F1 driver, F1 Manager 2023 puts the player behind the scenes to develop and cultivate the perfect driving team that equals on-track success.
I know a few people who write for the site that could really dig into this game. While I’m a filthy casual at the F1 series, I can respect the amount of detail and care that went into F1 Manager 2023. It’s everything an F1 fan could dream of when it comes to controlling every aspect of an F1 team, sans the graphic prowess that the racing sim brings with it.
So, break out those notebooks, get that racing opinion sharpened, and let’s dig into F1 Manager 2023.
No glam, no glitz, but plenty of detail
F1 Manager 2023 is something to behold. The game throws you immediately into the mix by putting you on a licensed racing team, where you will oversee several factors to the team’s success. For me, I chose the only racing team that came to mind – Aston Martin. As soon as I chose the team, and named my team (the Four Horsemen – or 4H), it was right into business.
Pre-Racing
The simulator is broken down into several pieces and parts. The major parts are picking and recruiting drivers, which is a task of its own, developing new car parts and adjusting them, and then the business side of it all, including managing budgets and keeping management and drivers happy. There is a lot to juggle before you put a tyre on the track.
The driver part is the most essential piece in this whole management system, at least in my humble, casual racing opinion. Getting the right driver with the right attitude and skills, who has a high rate of confidence during racing, is the key to any good racing success. For example, in the first race that I put my team through, I had one driver who had a high rate of confidence from practice to track, and who wanted to win. The other guy was not a team player, nor did he give two hoots about my lame strategy. Come to think of it, maybe he was the better, more intelligent driver. Anyway, picking and recruiting those drivers was essential, as was building on their strengths and developing a car that would work best for them. Much like in basketball, you build your team around their talents. Not the other way around.
If drivers were the easiest part of the experience, then the tougher part would be the staff. You are given a staff at the beginning of the game, and a staff you should keep, but you can recruit other pieces and parts to that staff. Those pieces and parts include a technical chief, head of aerodynamics, race engineers, and even sporting directors (it’s always nice to have SDs). If your team doesn’t have the success you want in a certain area, or you’re getting rich and want to be that (BLEEP) that wants the best of the best, then you can negotiate contracts and try to snag a staff upgrade on the free market. This is akin to Madden NFL’s management option, where you can negotiate contracts and try to make people happy enough to switch to your team. And what’s cool about this, also frustrating if you’re doing it wrong, is that you must juggle people’s attitudes about wasting time negotiating and try to give them the perfect contract without going too far into your yearly budget. The latter of which gets reviewed and broken down by a board of directors, who compare success to money spent. That’s insanely detailed, but that is probably the life of F1 management.
Once the drivers and staff are chosen, the next bit is adjusting your car. For me, the first time I played this, I decided that default was probably good enough. If you’re a hardcore player, the game features an extraordinary amount of detail. From chassis adjustments, wing adjustments, tyres, sidepods, underfloor powertrain, and even suspension, you can tinker with your team’s cars until you’re as satisfied. I found this part of the game incredibly deep and catered to the more experienced F1 fan. I mean, even down to picking powertrain manufacturers and studying attributes of engine types, this is stupidly detailed. All of this before your wheels hit the track.
Now, if everything works out, where you’re getting the most out of your drivers, team, and cars, then that will equal success. Once the money starts rolling in, you can start researching new equipment, upgrading your facilities, and where your drivers live, and you can start making micro-improvements to your overall status. This is a fascinating part of the game, where it takes a large amount of time to see these things come to fruition. Unlike instant gratification with most games, upgrading a team hub, scouting department, and race simulator at the same time will cost you millions and will take about 20+ days. Don’t worry, that’s not our days, rather it’s the calendar days within the game. The fact you can do this in some sort of RTS method is so cool and somewhat fun, even for casual racing people like me.
Racing Time
Once everything is settled on the pre-race end, the game shifts into race time. During this period of the game, you go through practice runs and qualifying laps to see where you end up for race day. This portion of the game is potentially the hardest part of the simulator, as everything you prepped for gets put into motion, from staff to drivers, and even down to car pieces and parts. Seeing all of it set into motion is quite thrilling and far more relaxing than I anticipated with F1 Manager 2023. You literally get to sit back and just basically see how your decisions work out.
Of course, you’re not sitting back at all during race day.
As your drivers tear through the track, you must communicate with them and work with instructing them to produce the most success. This includes letting them know when to get clean air (getting out from behind other cars), avoid curbs, and when to be aggressive. The first time I directed my Aston Martin drivers to be aggressive, one just flat-out decided to be pouty pants, and his attitude and confidence dropped dramatically. He even started cursing his displeasure with my decision-making, which was just a confidence booster for me. The other driver? He was doing okay and was just frustrated periodically. It was almost comical to see how my amateur decisions emotionally affected my drivers and how they performed. Okay, it was quite sad because I’m sure my virtual dudes wanted to compete badly, and I was failing them miserably.
Outside of pissing my drivers off and watching my money go down the F1 drain, but a fancy drain, I also made decisions to adjust the car, drew up a plan when the drivers would pit to change their tires, and communicated strategies along the way. The latter of the bunch allows you to set in motion a series of planned strategies that your drivers follow. That could be running the car to death the first 10 laps, then pitting, switching tires, and driving a different way. The sheer amount of detail you can throw into a race and see it executed, sometimes well, is brilliant. It’s what keeps the manager interesting and engaging. There was so much going on and so much at stake that it created this atmosphere of thrill that I quickly attached myself to in a serious manner. The freaking details that go into race day are just disgustingly amazing. There was quite a bit of thought and good execution that went into making this experience as detailed, stressful, and delightful as possible. Frontier Developments did a superb job of executing it and making it feel like an honest-to-God race day affair.
There were times during the race when I felt a bit lost in how to recover from falling behind. In the initial first race, once I lost a driver, I did everything I could to rebuild their confidence. It was difficult to get them going, even after changing up strategies to match their talents. It was periodically frustrating for me, but I must harken back to my lack of F1 driving knowledge as the reason. It was the only thing keeping me sane at times when one of my drivers truly hated my guts.
Overall, the gameplay delivers what it proposes. You get an amazingly detailed management journey through the F1 system and all of it is as engrossing as it is rewarding on race day. I can see a lot of people falling into this game and not coming out of it for months. The gameplay is so incredibly deep that it’s nearly impossible not to fall into it.
Not everything was perfect
While the team at Codemasters knocked it out of the visual ballpark this year, that graphical prowess wasn’t matched with F1 Manager 2023. It was certainly a first-year PlayStation 5 set of visuals that just couldn’t match what F1 2023 did with racing. From track animation to crew movements and such, there wasn’t a lot of visual current-generation gorgeousness going on with this game. Is that excusable? Sure, it is, but it’s certainly a downgrade to what most F1 fans are used to seeing this year.
Now, it should be pointed out that any game with ‘Manager’ in the title never brings the best of the best visuals to the table. Heck, when Football Manager first hit, it was a series of dots on a soccer field. And that one time when EA Sports thought it was a good idea to bring NFL Manager to the table in its own separate release, it certainly didn’t carry the Madden NFL visuals with it.
Still, the lack of great visuals is a small knock. But just a gentle tapping type of knock.
On that sweet note, let’s wrap this up.
Conclusion
F1 Manager 2023 from Frontier Developments is a detailed F1 experience for the F1 fan that needs a bit more than what F1 2023 can deliver. It has every aspect of running an F1 team, designing success on the racetrack, and juggling the business side of the sport. What it doesn’t have is up-to-par visuals for this generation, but that takes a backseat to the F1 managing the game successfully delivers.
