The F1 Manager 2022 official release date is finally here!
We've been loving this game, as you can read in our review. But it's not perfect, and there are a few things F1 Manager 2022 is missing.
These might be small things for some players, but when you can hire technical chiefs, get detailed setups, and the game engine looks so good it's quite surprising these aspects aren't included.
No sprint races
We knew sprint races would not be featuring in F1 Manager 2022 before it launched. However, the more we play the more they are missed.
Love them or hate them, they appear here to stay. We've already seen two this year and have one more to come, and there will be three more in 2023.
That these races, and their points, are not in the game is a huge shame. As a management sim F1 Manager 2022 should be as close to the real championship as possible, so not having them is a big negative.
We expect sprint races to be added in the next installment, and hopefully will move around the calendar as you progress into future years.
Masi-style safety cars
Safety cars in F1 Manager 2022 are one of the biggest strategic turning points of any race. They can gift you a free stop or totally ruin your undercut.
But if you are a lap down on the field then they are absolutely the last thing you want to see. In F1 Manager 2022 lapped cars do not unlap themselves under the safety car.
Instead, they are just part of the queue and as a result, get blue-flagged to the back once racing gets underway again. That means you can end up going a lap down to a car you were battling with if you are unfortunate enough to get split by the leader when the safety car was deployed.
It also impacts those at the front of the grid, as cars can be slow to react to blue flags and can hold up the battle for the lead.
We hope this is corrected in future updates, as it can really ruin races from any point if they come out later on in races.
Tyre deltas
The Pirelli range of tyres is designed to provide slightly different levels of grip & durability depending on what compound you are using.
In the real world, we can see differences of 0.6-0.7 seconds per lap in terms of pace between each step of the compounds. That delta can reach the two-second mark when a driver puts on fresh softs and is racing someone on old mediums.
But in F1 Manager 2022 that difference is much less. While there is a bit of a gap between compounds it is negligible. Wear and temperature also don't impact the performance of the rubber very much.
That means you can just trust the tyres to perform well until they reach a cliff edge at 30% when you really must get off them.
All of this means that one-stop strategies and overcuts are pretty over-powered in F1 Manager 2022 at the moment.
This is something that really should be fixed as soon as possible as it makes races relatively easy if you play into the optimum way of racing.
For those wondering, that is to start on the mediums and run them as long as you can before switching to the hards. Reacting to weather and safety cars is still vital. But by and large you can reuse the same strategy over and over in F1 Manager and benefit greatly from prioritising durability over peak grip.