F1 Manager 2023 review: A worthy successor making a podium finish

F1 Manager 2023's release was always expected when Frontier Developments kicked off a brand new franchise in the middle of 2022. It brought a video game to the market that has been long asked for by lovers of sports and management titles. Last year, I was pleasantly surprised by the new launch, as my prior expectations were based on Motorsport Manager 3. However, the presence of an official F1 license secured my vote of confidence, and it appears that the developers have managed to do a good job overall with the second entry to the series.

F1 Manager 2022 was a new release, and it blew me over. I expected to see much more work this time as the foundation has already been laid. If first impressions are to be considered, F1 veterans and beginners will be equally pleased with what's on offer. More importantly, much of the game works as intended and enhances the presentation, which has been the most vital part of this video game series.

F1 Manager 2023 is a strong sequel that hits many highs but a few lows

First look at F1 Manager (Image via Autosport)

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The main objective of a management game is always simple - you manage! In F1 Manager 2023, you don the boots of being a team principal who has to make the most out of his team. Of course, this will vary based on which team you're managing - nothing but a championship will satisfy Red Bull. At the same time, securing the 8th spot is considered reasonably satisfactory for Williams.

I always enjoy this part of the different definitions of success in management games. It just ensures that you don't always have to win to keep your job secured, and doing so in F1 is already pretty tricky.

Story and game modes

F1 Manager 2023 has three main modes - Career, Race Replay, and Scenarios. Career Mode is where you'll spend most of your time with this video game. You'll be assigned to choose one of the ten teams and lead them to their seasonal glories. Of course, picking your favorite team is just the first part, and it begins the long process of taking care of many things.

F1 Manager 2023 doesn't miss a spot at micromanagement as far as teams are concerned. You must do everything from checking your seasonal finances to developing your cars. Developing different parts is arguably one of the most important things to do, and I enjoyed the degree of customization. The ability to tweak the same part being manufactured differently gives you an advantage over your opponents.

Frontier Developments has incorporated much of the feedback from the previous entry by introducing the Race Replay mode. According to the developers, we will get new races every weekend based on real-life fixtures. However, we will have the ability to recreate a different ending from what happens in reality.

If you own the Digital Deluxe Edition, you'll enjoy 12 custom scenarios. There are some crazy ones you could experience, including one where all the cars have identical setups and capabilities. This refreshing mode will let you enjoy something different from the typical career mode experience.

Gameplay and presentation

The presence of the official license makes things much more interesting (Image via Frontier Developments)

Here comes the most crucial part since the F1 license alone can do very little. The gameplay, for a large part, is a slight step up to the one offered by F1 Manager 2022, so it's pretty good as it gets. You have many options to pick from when the race weekends are concerned. It begins with practice, followed by qualification, and then the race. You could choose to manually do each of them, simulate some sessions, or simulate through all of them. Simulating could save time and energy, but it's best to micromanage.

No matter how good your car and drivers are, running the sessions manually is crucial. Simulating too much could result in your drivers losing confidence, and your race could go wrong. Now micromanaging does take time, and you could feel it to be tiresome, but thanks to the presentation, the races feel very immersive in F1 Manager 2023.

F1 Manager 2023's presentation is top-notch (Image via Frontier Developments)

There are different camera angles, which lets you even observe a race from your driver's visor cam. You could also speed up a race up to 16 times, changing the overall presentation. If you want to watch all the actions first hand, you can speed up by two times at best.

The gameplay covers off-race management, pre-race events, and the actual race. The first one purely strides towards the managing side of things. The challenges are endless, from controlling the development of your car parts to recruiting the best drivers. Ensuring success at the end of the season is a true challenge, as you're not the one driving the car.

Pre-race events include practice sessions and qualifiers, followed by the main race event. F1 Manager 2023 makes it pretty accessible for players of every experience. At the very beginning, you can declare your level of expertise with F1 Manager 2022. This will enable you to get proper guidance in every step. Moreover, you can automate or micromanage a race as much as you want.

Performance, audio, and visuals

F1 Manager 2023 expertly recurs the race experience you can expect from real life. The driver faces and overall visuals are satisfactory, and even though I selected High quality (you can raise it to Ultra), the graphics are decent. That said, some of the race-day animations are sometimes clunky. It wasn't at a level where it completely broke my immersiveness, but those sudden movements of your cars are noticeable. The wheel-t0-wheel contents certainly need to feel much more high-octane.

F1 Manager 2023's magnificently recreates real-life races (Image via Frontier Developments)

The engine sounds are realistic, and Frontier has also used the actual voices of staff and drivers. This ensures authenticity; when you hear the radio, you might even mistake it for watching an actual race.

It's worth noting that the developers already have a day-one patch coming out on July 31. Specific issues need solving, and I encountered a big bug when manually switching to control my driver. The race automatically paused; it never continued, no matter what I did. Once I reloaded the same race and proceeded with it, the same occurrence didn't occur. Inevitably other glitches keep happening casually, but they're not game-breaking. Things like the rain seeping through the Monaco tunnel are present again (pretty hilarious), so those problems must be solved.

In conclusion

F1 Manager 2023 is a definite step up over last year's offering. The overall level of immersiveness combined with the presentation feels absolutely on point. Things aren't radically different, and this helped me keep a continuation from my experience with the previous game. However, there are an ample number of subtle differences that are constantly noticeable when you try to guide your F1 team to success.

Plenty of positives regarding the variety of game modes released will help increase the shelf-life. I hope there's a possibility in the future to play F2 and F3. So far, you can choose to recruit drivers from those divisions, but you can't have a career in those divisions.

Whether it's gameplay or presentation, F1 Manager 2023 does pretty well. Some issues surrounding the pre-launch state must be driven out as quickly as possible. However, I can honestly see myself spending many hours on my Red Bull save as I try to replicate their real-life dominance.

F1 Manager 2023 Review