F1 Manager 2024 Review (Xbox Series X|S)

When F1 Manager first arrived on Xbox a few years ago as a brand-new franchise from the simulation geniuses at Frontier Developments, we were genuinely surprised at how well they'd managed to combine the thrill of EA's F1 series with the addictive strategy elements of Motorsport Manager. Then, F1 Manager 2023 ended up being a more polished outing when it arrived last July, and now we're getting the best version yet in F1 Manager 2024.

The big highlight feature this year is something called "Create A Team", where you can design your own F1 franchise to take on the likes of Ferrari and Mercedes. It very much works the same way as the usual experience, but you can tailor it to your liking - pick the drivers you want, pick the staff you want, choose how much money you want to start with, etc. You get a few customisation elements too, such as the ability to create your own logo (check out our screenshots to see the Pure Xbox one!). It's very quickly become our F1 Manager mode of choice.

In terms of gameplay, you'll notice a very familiar setup if you played last year's title, albeit with a few cool additions. Mechanical failures are now something to consider, which makes managing your car's condition more important than ever both on and off the track. A mentality system is also in play, where your drivers and staff members will be affected based on their happiness levels. Plus, a new sponsorship system allows you to fulfill a series of tasks in order to earn extra money and marketability, but at the risk of negatively affecting your team.

All of these features prove worthwhile additions and add extra layers of strategy to the experience, even if they don't always appear to be meshing perfectly at times - the mentality system in particular can feel a little lopsided in some scenarios. The positives largely outweigh any negatives though.

You'll obviously spend most of your time on the track in F1 Manager 2024, and as usual the game continues to excel here. Everything from practice sessions to the races themselves are enjoyable to manage, and the control scheme remains intuitive and easy to learn, even despite the added complexity that gets implemented with each passing year. Just like in the 2023 version, the game supports mouse and keyboard on Xbox as well.

Mechanical failures, safety cars, big crashes, small crashes, delayed pit stops and plenty of other authentic situations combine to deliver a varied gameplay experience from race-to-race, and it's all complimented by the addition of a new heli-cam camera angle that we've been favouring a lot during our time with the game so far.

That's not to say we don't have a few minor grumbles and constructive criticisms still. Something that grates on us after a while is feeling like we need to micro-manage every step of a race - in the future, it'd be great to see a "delegate" option for managing things like ERS and individual "overtake" and "defend" commands. Also, even though you can pick multiple difficulty settings which is great, there are occasions where the level of challenge perhaps doesn't feel as balanced as it should. Don't get us wrong though - we really like F1 Manager 2024 on the whole!