F1 Manager 2024 review – in cruise control

Last year’s F1 Manager 2024 was a resounding success by most metrics. It took the solid but somewhat barebones foundations laid down by the first game and massively iterated on it, adding in plenty of new features and quality-of-life updates to really bring the game together. But while last year’s game came on leaps and bounds from its predecessor, F1 Manager 2024 has taken baby steps in comparison.

Perhaps the biggest addition is the new Create A Team option, letting you choose your drivers, and customise your team’s colours, livery, race suits, and logo. It’s not just cosmetic, however, as you can effectively choose a story for your team. Are you a scrappy new team working your way up from the bottom, or are you an established team, flush with cash and already competing for championships? It adds a nice bit of variety on top of simply choosing from an already existing team, especially if you’re the kind of person who likes to compare your saves with friends.

On top of that, fans of longer-term saves will be pleased to see the inclusion of driver affiliates. You can now recruit drivers to compete in F2 and F3, who will slowly progress over time with the end goal of being called up to your F1 team when the time is right. This is especially important as teams will now keep tabs on all your drivers and look to poach them if they’re performing particularly well, so having a couple of potential backup drivers is a smart idea. That being said, prevention is better than cure, and keeping your drivers happy is the best way to stop them from heading to other teams, which leads us swiftly onto the mentality system.

For me, the mentality system is the single most important feature added to this year’s game. Your drivers and key staff now have a morale system. Higher morale means higher confidence, which in turn means higher stats and better performance on the track. Of course, this conversely means that bad morale will lead to worse performances. Mentality can be affected by anything from race performance and how well you manage the team to whether or not they get on with their engineers.

At the start of my season, Alex Albon and Yuki Tsunoda were my two drivers. On paper, Albon should have been finishing above Tsunoda. But two poor races at the start of the season saw him finishing several places off his expected seventh place, causing him to miss his targets. His morale plummeted. To remedy this, I changed my approach in the next few races. I prioritised Tsunoda, who was in relatively good spirits, to try and push for him to finish higher, while I lowered Albon’s targets to something more manageable.

And it worked swimmingly. Tsunoda managed to push on from eighth to a couple of respectable sixth-place finishes. Meanwhile, Albon met his targets twice in a row and was back in the groove. In our next race, some excellent driving from Albon and a fortunate penalty for Verstappen meant we took pole position, something that seemed impossible only a few races beforehand. Do not underestimate how massively a good mentality can affect your success.

But mentality giveth and mentality taketh away. Another couple of races into Albon’s hot streak and he was ahead of the pack by some margin when a crash brought the safety car out. As soon as the race restarted, he dropped down to third. That’s a hit to mentality. Another couple of laps and he slipped to fourth, then fifth, each one tearing a chunk into his morale and bringing on more mistakes. I tried to encourage him to drive more aggressively, hoping that a couple of overtakes might bump his morale up a bit, but the damage was seemingly done, and by the time the chequered flag puts us out of our misery, he’s dropped all the way to 12th.

It’s a great system in theory, and when it’s working for you, it feels great. But on the flip side, when the negatives kick in, it feels like an almost unassailable threat to your race, and one that can potentially derail your entire season. I think it needs a bit more fine-tuning to make negative morale less punishing, but also good morale less powerful.

The game has made the customary updates to enhance realism. Mechanical failures have been added to the game, requiring you to either pit to get your engineers to take a look, or stay out on the track and risk having to retire if something goes catastrophically wrong. You’ll have options during the race to lower your chances of a failure, such as avoiding high-risk kerbs. But you can also take on more risk, driving more aggressively to climb the pack. Balancing your failure points with your driving strategy is a fine line, but adds some much-needed drama to the gameplay.

Whether or not F1 Manager 2024 is enough of an improvement on last year’s game to make it worthwhile is still up for debate. For some, Create A Team is all you’ll need to hear, but if you’re not interested in that, the only real addition is the mentality system, which as we’ve discussed, has its ups and downs. Meanwhile, many of the other additions we haven’t even discussed, such as choosing your sponsors, simulating races, and new camera angles, aren’t exactly game-changing new features.

If you’re a fan of the series, then you’re going to be a fan of this one. If you’re looking to try it out for the first time, then there’s no doubt that this is the best game the series has to offer. But if you’re still enjoying F1 Manager 2023 and wondering if it’s worth upgrading to the latest iteration right away, I don’t think it is. For the most part, it’s the same old F1 Manager that players have come to love over the last few years, but for me, that’s part of the problem.

F1 Manager 2024 is here, and with that comes a whole new set of driver ratings updated for the 2024 season. If you’re looking to start your own save and want to do some planning, whether you’re looking for the best of the best or someone a bit lower down in the rankings to take to glory, you’ve come to the right place.

We’ve collated a list of all of the F1 drivers in the game and their respective overall ratings so you know exactly how they all stack up. So if you’re looking for a team to manage or want to poach some drivers for yourself in the new Create A Team mode, we’ve got you covered.

Unsurprisingly, Max Verstappen tops the charts with a pretty comprehensive 92 rating. Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton aren’t too far behind though, each clocking in with a very respectable 90 rating, with the likes of Charles Leclerc (89), Carlos Sainz (88) and George Russell (87) all following closely.

On the opposite side of the spectrum, we’ve got the second youngest driver on the grid at the bottom of the rankings as 23-year-old Logan Sargeant unfortunately takes the bottom spot with a 78, just behind Guanyu Zhou (80) and Kevin Magnussen (81).

During our review, we decided to go down the middle with the dynamic duo of Alexander Albon and Yuki Tsunoda, both of whom start with a solid 83 rating.

The 2024 F1 season is well underway, and Codemasters are back with the latest game in the F1 series looking to capitalise on the sport continuing to grow massively in popularity. But with a yearly release bringing inevitable questions on how worthwhile each year’s game is, it remains to be seen how well F1 24’s major updates to Career Mode and realism manage to answer them.

The biggest change is certainly the overhaul of Career Mode, which has had the most significant upgrade for many years. First things first, while you can still create a custom driver, players can now also opt to play as a real F1 or F2 driver. Not only that, but certain icons of the sport are available, letting you take control of the likes of Ayrton Senna and Michael Schumacher – a little odd, but definitely a nice option for those who want it.

As you play through a season, your Driver Rating changes dynamically. Good performances on the track will see your rating increase, leading to your driver’s skills increasing, gaining advantages such as upgrades to your car’s parts or extra resources being allocated to you over your teammate. Optional mid-race challenges  grant a big boost to your ratings, and offer an extra dimension that makes each race unique.

Another new addition is the Challenge Career Mode. Don’t pay much heed to the name, as this is less of a Career Mode as it is a collection of scenarios and challenges. You’ll be presented with a set of goals to complete, and receive points for completing them, with higher difficulties resulting in higher points.

Come the end of each Challenge Career Mode, and the number of points you’ve earned will see you placed on a leaderboard. It’s a great touch and lets players who perhaps aren’t too keen on playing online still compete  with friends and strangers alike. It’s also a mode that encourages repeat playthroughs, aiming to push that score higher and higher each time and is definitely worth checking out.

While the improvements to Career Mode are a major plus, it’s disappointing to see Braking Point fail to return. The story mode has been one of the most engaging aspects of the past few F1 titles. And while I understand that it’s a major undertaking for the Codemasters team, hence why it’s currently releasing in every other title rather than in each consecutive year, it’s hard not to feel like F1 24 is seriously missing out by not having it.

The most realistic driving yet

As for the driving itself, Codemasters are promising their largest update to physics and handling yet with their Dynamic Handling system and changes to the aerodynamics of each car. Different cars now handle differently, which is much more apparent when driving assists are turned off. Where one might excel around tight corners, another may require a bit more effort to corner effectively.

While this is unlikely to have much bearing on casual players and F1 fans, it’s a very welcome change for veterans of the series. These changes create an extra level of challenge for players, but for players who take the time to truly master the mechanics the skill ceiling is significantly higher, and it’s rewarding to see your efforts translate directly into faster times.

While the new physics and handling systems are the height of Codemasters’ push for improved realism in the game, it’s by no means the end of it. Four tracks – Silverstone, Spa, Jeddah, and Lusail – have had major updates to make them as close to their real-life counterparts as possible.

And it’s not only the tracks that have had the update treatment; all liveries have been updated to reflect those of the 2024 season. Furthermore, audio samples have been taken from real races in past years to add driver voice lines to the game. When playing as the likes of Lewis Hamilton or Max Verstappen, you’ll now get a few choice voice lines at certain points in the race to add a new layer of immersion.

For those who play for the graphics, F1 24 is unsurprisingly the best-looking game in the series so far. Each car looks slick, and I never tired of checking out the new liveries as I passed by during a race. And as for the environments, it’s hard not to be distracted by how good some of the tracks look, especially when it comes to spectacular night races like Singapore.