Instead of putting a steering wheel in the player's hands and a gas pedal at their feet, racing management sims let the player take a step back from the action. As the guiding voice for an entire race team, the player is able to govern almost every aspect behind the scenes, from driver recruitment and budgets to oversteering and traction.
In F1 Manager 2022, the player takes control of an F1 team, trying to steer it to victory one lap at a time. From the graphics and licensing to the crashes and photo finishes, there are many things the game gets right, but that's not to say it couldn't be improved. Walking the tightrope between abstraction and micromanagement is tough, and it's easy to let a thing or two slip along the way. Here are some fixes F1 Manager 2022 needs.
6 Driver Scouting
Whether it's used for street races or F1, the greatest car in the world won't win a race if it doesn't have a talented driver behind the wheel. To make sure the player has the talent they need on their roster to make this happen, the player needs to scout for drivers. While F1 Manager 2022 does include a Driver Scouting feature, as any good management sim must, it's bare bones.
Whenever a driver retires, the game replaces them with a new, randomly generated driver who can be recruited. While fine in theory, this system doesn't give players the option to run their own youth program, recruit academy drivers, or otherwise reach beyond the confines of F3 and F2 to sculpt young talent to its fullest potential.
5 Team Creation
While F1 Manager 2022 does a great job at putting the player in control of an existing team, the game lacks the ability to create a new team from scratch. Being able to create one's own F1 team would make the experience much deeper and more personal for players.
To its credit, the game is fully licensed, and seeing real teams, faces, names, and logos adds an all-important level of realism. Would the game feel as impactful if it had no connection to actual teams and racers, and their unique personalities and histories? Probably not. Nonetheless, being able to craft an original team from the ground up, designing everything from racer and crew composition to branding for an entirely new F1 franchise, would give players a level of authorship that they currently don't have.
4 Mid-Race Communication
Anyone who has ever watched a professional race understands the constant communication that takes place. Drivers, management, and engineers are in a constant dialog, determining the best course of action at any given time and making adjustments based on changing race conditions. Not only does this add realism when featured in a game, but it also allows the player to directly influence events on the track. Many excellent racing games include such a feature.
There is no way to communicate with a driver mid-race in F1 Manager 2022. Whether the player wants to congratulate them on a job well done or advise them to keep it together when they're struggling, having a real and impactful dialog with the driver would help sell an already phenomenal race experience. The chatter that occurs during races is just flavoring, as inconsequential as it is pleasing to the ear.
3 Multiplayer
One thing that makes motorsport so complex and exciting is the team element. While it may only be one person in the driver's seat, their success stands on the shoulders of an entire team. The talents, quirks, and limitations of many people help determine whether a car clears the finish line. Given how social and collaborative a sport F1 is, it's a shame that F1 Manager 2022 doesn't include a multiplayer option.
As fantasy leagues and other sports games have proved, players love to collaborate and compete in the world of sports, whether it's by directly controlling every turn of the steering wheel and stomp of the gas or by executing brilliant trades on minimal budgets. Being able to go through the highs and lows of F1 management with friends would elevate the entire experience. It's just too bad that isn't possible here.
2 Dynamic Set-Ups
The game uses a set-up system in which the player prepares for races by having the driver practice on a track, and then provide feedback to the manager so that the manager can make necessary adjustments until the car handles the way that the driver wishes it to. On the face of it, this is a good and sensible system. In practice, it's problematic.
The end result is a system in which the player is merely plugging given values into a series of sliding scales to tweak the minimum and maximum values of Oversteering, Braking Stability, Cornering, Traction, and Straights until the driver is completely confident in the set-up. Many games feature tuning set-ups, but this one eliminates the need for the player to have in-depth knowledge on any of these subjects. It also means there's no real room for innovation. The player is simply inputting predetermined values which, while effective, isn't exciting.
1 Overall Complexity
How complex should a simulation be? Just because the player is managing an entire racing franchise doesn't mean that management has to be realistic, after all. The simpler and more arcade-like a racing game is, the easier it is for new players to learn. However, it's less likely to have overall longevity. More complex games, on the other hand, might have hundreds or thousands of hours of content, but be too much work to be fun.
F1 Manager 2022 sits in the middle of management sim complexity, and there's nothing inherently wrong with that. The player is not forced to micromanage every tiny element that exists in the real F1 scene, but neither are they deprived of the ability to exert their influence over most critical areas. The game doesn't frequently drop the ball in this area, but when it does, it's noticeable. Though the player has a great deal of authority in most areas, lacking meaningful input in areas such as race set-up and youth development does have a cumulative impact, leaving the player wishing their role were just a little more meaningful.
F1 Manager 2022 is available now for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.