F1 Manager 2022 Review – Slow Pit Stop

F1 Manager 2022 has been waiting for motorsports enthusiasts for a long time: you will be transported back to the year 2000, when EA released the last official F1 Manager game. But given that the genre has come a long way at this point, F1 Manager 2022 does just enough to cement its place for years to come, or deviates a few times too far from ideal for a rookie in its first season. ?

There’s a lot of tweaking to do before you jump into your first race, as there are tons of emails and car development screens to go through and analyze, but when you finally send your racers out on the road, you’ll be blown away. Sports management games aren’t really known for their graphical fidelity, but whether you’re driving around Monaco in the rain with splashes of cars crashing into the camera, or watching cinematic camera views as cars slide past the neon . lights at night in singapore, almost every moment is designed to stand out.

Things get a little worse when the cars try to overtake while moving from side to side as if jumping from one Scalextric lane to another. All the other typically dramatic moments, like crashes and spins, will suffer the same fate. Cars will often hit a wall at full speed to freeze as if they have no weight or momentum, or if they spin around and try to recover, they do an incredible pirouette to change angles before returning to the track. F1 Manager 2022 looks great most of the time, but when it’s supposed to be spectacular, it often falls apart spectacularly.

But as the success of Football Manager shows, despite its 90s-style on-pitch action, what really matters is the management toolset and its reliability. At first glance, the F1 Manager 2022 stand is well equipped for strategists and engineers, with the ability to research and develop six different parts for their vehicles (front wing, rear fender, chassis, underbody, suspension and side ponies). hire new drivers and employees, select the facilities in which you invest your budget and the ability to manage each session during the race weekend.

However, take a closer look at the finer details and you’ll find that there are not only shortcomings, but staggering inaccuracies for an official F1 game. The game’s most glaring omission is that drag racing simply doesn’t exist, despite having featured in several Grands Prix since last season and being a staple of the sport going forward.

Passionate F1 fans will lament how poor tire compound affects lap times, as the difference between hard and soft tires is only a tenth or two seconds; in reality, the result is usually more than ten times higher. This means that two-stop strategies are, in fact, never viable unless weather conditions change, because, for example, switching from old hard tires to new soft tires does not offer the advantage that it would in real life. The wet tires are also affected by the fact that tire degradation is almost non-existent, as the kit would easily last the entire race if at least one pitting was not required.

The DRS activation is also absurdly powerful, much stronger than in real sports. This results in the DRS trains overtaking each other throughout the run at only one or two predetermined overtaking points on the track. If you don’t set your tires, fuel, and ERS to the most aggressive settings, it’s incredibly hard to pull away.

The fact that you have to carefully monitor your riders’ ERS settings during the race is also not ideal, as it’s not something a true team manager or race engineer would do. You should be able to tell your drivers whether they should use ERS or use it themselves, with skill rating and driver attributes determining how effectively they use it. Instead, it is not possible to watch the race at speeds higher than 2x because you will lose the best opportunities to use ERS.

The AI ​​strategies are also flawed as they can’t adapt to changing race conditions or respond to changes you can make as a player. For example, in one race, Hamilton used a two-stop strategy at Jeddah, but despite the appearance of a safety car with ten laps to go, he did not enter the pit lane. during security period, but after this giving up the first five beyond the points. Something like this has happened at every other race in the 20 or so hours I’ve spent with F1 Manager 2022, though this is by far the most egregious example. There is another quirk with pace cars, is that lapped cars don’t come out while the pace car is moving. Michael Masi would be proud, but not every race has to have the same challenge as Abu Dhabi 2021.

However, if you can get past those issues, there’s a lot to love about it and it’s a thrilling experience to hone your pit stop strategy and tire management throughout the race and get higher than you should. The red flag illuminates the situation and you are forced to adapt. Researching new car parts, allocating wind tunnel hours and choosing between different priorities to improve your car’s different performance really shows that running an F1 team is a long-term project. Each season new rules (proposals you can vote for or against) can come into effect just like in real life, so even if you win the Constructors’ Championship in one season, it might not be easy for you to repeat it. Next year.

Radio messages deserve special attention, since, having heard the cry of Daniel Riccardo himself: “Shit, I fell! I’m fine though” is a great and exciting touch. Unfortunately, there are no radio jokes like Lando Norris “up and down, side to side like a roller coaster” or Fernando Alonso stating that Lewis Hamilton “can only go out and go first”, but every radio control or announcement of tires is awesome. authentic.

I’ve had fun with F1 Manager 2022 so far, but it’s not a game that was ready for a full release. Fixes are needed, especially with tire wear and lap times, before we can recommend it to long-time F1 fans. It’s the best motorsports driving simulator available right now though, I just want a sense of authenticity that extends beyond the licenses, radio messages and big name drivers.