➤ F1 Manager 2023, the review of the official manager of Formula 1 🕹

Formula 1 that does not convince, does not change: in the review of F1 Manager 2023 the game seems too similar to its predecessor with less impactful additions.

It seemed that the regulatory upheaval that came into force at the beginning of last year had laid the foundations for a finally more open and unpredictable Formula 1, after a decade of monochromatic dominance (first Red Bull and then Mercedes). It was like this only until the 2022 French Grand Prix: since then Red Bull has won every race, except for the one in Brazil (the first success of Russell's career) and the one in Singapore a few weeks ago, thanks to a incredible strategy. and coldness of Carlos Sainz.

This long premise of establishing a parallel with the Formula 1 Manager 2023 review: Frontier's management software, in its first incarnation, entertained for a few weeks. Just enough time to reach the middle of the championship and the developer did everything possible, supporting with a minimum salary a title that, on the other hand, would have needed much more attention to extract all the good potential it hinted at. Those who expected, as Ferrari fans have done for years, that the updated version would bring the long-awaited changes, should think twice: F1 Manager 2023 recalls the start of the season of Alonso's Aston Martin, as promising as it ended like a fire of hay.

Let's be clear, there isn't much more to add regarding a game launching on July 31st. At the beginning of October we published a special with all the new features that the new version brought, while just a few days ago the news came that, due to disappointing sales, the developer was forced to significantly reduce its staff. Let's take advantage of it then. availability on Xbox Game Pass to recover the latest version of the official Formula 1 management system.

Chronicle of a failure foretold?

F1 Manager 2023, the review of the official manager of Formula 1 — Some situations in F1 Manager 2023 are not bad at all

Let's start in order: F1 Manager 2023 is presented in every way similar to its predecessor, directly from the home screen. Same number of menus (a bit redundant), same position of the icons, same administrative structure, which was the one that had been exposed to the most heated criticism. The team's work focused mainly on the aspect of the contracts of the drivers (who were previously hired immediately, while now the hiring can be planned with the start of the new season) and the development of their skills, which can focus on a specific subgroup. . The starting values are now more consistent (aside from the judgment on Piastri), with Alonso and Hamilton just below the cannibal Verstappen. However, it is still an overly generous criterion that levels up all the drivers present on the grid (the difference between Zhou and Leclerc is less than 10%) and leaves a wide (too much?) margin for improvement for the talents of Formula 2 and Formula 3.

It's still basically The section regarding exploration is useless., since the values of technicians and pilots are known and their only usefulness lies in discovering the initial salary. However, in this case too there is a wide margin for negotiation: for example, to convince Giovinazzi to wear the Alfa Romeo colors again, we proposed ten contracts, adjusting the salary from time to time.

In the orange sea

Revision work also for the section. car updates- The development of the individual areas (again six) is practically unchanged, but it is a little more intuitive to compare the performance of F1 itself with that of the opposing teams. In addition, component wear has been introduced that previously only affected those of the powertrain, which is why the continuous manufacturing of spare parts is important. "Emergency" production, which allows new components to be created in real time, is now extremely more expensive than in the past. In general, as in reality, everything has become more expensive and this forces us to manage our finances more carefully.

Some new features have also been introduced in the menu related to career staff: in addition to the technical chief, the aerodynamics chief and the two track engineers, we find the figure of the sports director who supervises the team of mechanics. The latter, in the style of Football Manager, receive monthly training to improve performance when changing tires or assembling the car. Be careful not to squeeze them like lemons because they could get tired and cause disasters during the pit stop, at least in theory... As with the exploration section, this also seemed to be there just to make up the numbers, because it would require a lot more depth to influence team management, in an aspect that, even in reality, is very level between all teams.

The structures submenu has remained identical in every way to that of Formula 1 Manager 2022, and it is a shame because it was the one that, simply doubling the number of upgrades (each center has five levels), would have allowed us to create much more. variety between stables. The same reasoning also applies to sponsors and the board of directors: it is not possible to create a team from scratch, but at least it can be modified throughout the race. The F2 and F3 championships are not selectable, but the different races are simulated.

Fuchsia!

Other refinement work can be felt during the race weekend. Once again, free training serves to "unlock" performance points, but also to increase driver confidence level, news that did not convince at all. This is a value that overlaps with the refinement with the track and that, ultimately, should favor overtaking or maintaining a position when it is high. In practice, this is an addition that is difficult to appreciate. More specific is the temperature of the tires, which must be kept under control to prevent lap times from increasing or the driver losing control of the car. The DRS effect had already been fixed with a patch in the previous episode; However, the power of the undercut is still missing. Replacing tires a few laps earlier does not lead to the significant improvement in times that is often seen in reality and, in general, tire degradation and the performance difference between compounds are not very clear, so The difference between the various strategies is often marginal..

From the technical point of view, in addition to the spectacular helmet camera, we are witnessing improvement work on tracks and cars that are now even more detailed. Accidents are more believable (investigation has now also been introduced), while the animations of the mechanics and drivers are always the same. The audio is also better, with a greater variety of communications between driver and track engineer and commentary, although still poor, less approximate than in the past.

PC system requirements

Test setup

Operating System: Windows 11 Pro
Processor: AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D
Memory: 32GB RAM
Video schematic: AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX

Minimum requirements

Operating system: Windows 10 64-bit
Processor: Intel Core i5-4590 / AMD Athlon FX-8370
Memory: 8GB RAM
Video card: Nvidia GeForce GTX 960 / AMD Radeon R9 280x (3GB VRAM)
Memory: 30 GB available space

Recommended requirements

Operating system: Windows 11 64-bit
Processor: Intel Core i7-7700 / AMD Ryzen 7 2700
Memory: 16GB RAM
Video diagram: Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 / AMD Radeon RX 580 (4GB VRAM)

Conclusions

Tested version Xbox Series X digital delivery Steam, epic games store, humble store, Xbox Store, Windows Store Price 54,99 € Holygamerz.com 6.5 Readers (11) 7.1 your vote

F1 Manager 2023 does not represent the evolutionary leap that one would expect after Frontier's good debut in the difficult world of Formula One management. The improvements are marginal and could have easily been made with a patch on the previous title; Additionally, the additions are very limited and do not significantly improve the gaming experience. While overall a better game than last year, it cannot be recommended to anyone who already owns F1 Manager 2022.