Nothing stands still in F1, and Frontier’s impressive pace of change in licensed sports management sim F1 Manager 2023 is a testament to that. Building on last year’s fine debut release, the updated 2023 title introduces several key innovations, including an all-new scenario mode.
Entirely separate from the main career, scenario mode is a chance to relive key moments from the unfolding season, take on specific strategy conundrums that crop up during the actual races, and find out whether the strategy you shouted at Sky Sports F1 repeatedly really would have done better than what Ferrari went with.
A new trailer played at the PC Gaming Show reveals that scenario mode in action, giving the player a chance to right some wrongs that they watched unfold this season and rewrite history more favorably for the teams they’re controlling.
That’s quite a substantial addition to an already feature-rich package, which now also includes a Sporting Director role in charge of your pit crew, the day-to-day training of that pit crew, and a driver confidence mechanic whereby completing positive actions creates a kind of psychological momentum for a driver during a session—fast sectors, successful overtakes—while negative actions like mistakes or failed overtakes lowers their confidence and makes more mistakes more likely. For 20 men with necks like the base of a redwood, they’re surprisingly sensitive.
When I saw F1 Manager 2023 recently, the simulator proved to be more exciting on the screen, with drivers taking different lines to reflect their driving behavior—with more aggressive tire usage taking them onto the curbs and a more conservative approach keeping them strictly to the tarmac. It’s, all in all, a more lively game than last year’s offering.
F1 Manager 2023 is due to release later in 2023, and you can wishlist it on Steam already.