Everything you need to know as a new F1® Team Principal.
F1® Manager 2024 places you in control of an F1® team as you lead them to glory in the Constructor’s Championship. As the most authentic and realistic depiction of a Formula 1® season to date, there’s a lot to do in F1® Manager 2024 as you manage the daily priorities of a Team Principal.
This beginner’s guide will walk you through what your day-to-day responsibilities are, the various priorities you’ll have to juggle and a few tips to help keep you on the right track.
Choose a Team or Create Your Own
In F1® Manager 2024 you can choose to take on the role of Team Principal for an existing F1® team or, for the first time in the series, bring your racing dream to life as a custom eleventh team on the grid.
The new Create a Team mode ignites your creativity as you design your dream car livery, customise your team’s logo, and even style your race suits and helmets. Define your team’s origins with preset starting conditions such as your car’s competitiveness, starting facilities and powertrain, or take total control of each area and write your own chapter.
Regardless of whether you choose an existing team or create your own, both will have their own set of starting challenges for you to manage.
Preparing for Race Weekend
Once you’ve chosen your team, you’ll enter the game proper and begin to prep for the first race weekend of the season in Bahrain. There are 24 Grands Prix race weekends in the 2024 F1® calendar and you’ll have to prepare your team for each of them.
In between races you’ll juggle vehicle maintenance, investing in design and research projects, developing your facilities, managing your drivers and staff, and handling the finances. No one ever said the life of a F1® Team Principal was smooth sailing!
As you progress through the week you will also receive emails from your team members, sponsors, or other parties. It’ll be down to you to decide what you do with the information they send your way and how you handle any dilemmas presented to you.
In the lead up to the race weekend it’ll be all on your shoulders to balance your responsibilities and arrive with a team and a car that will find a place in the points.
Leading from the Pit Wall
While a large amount of your time in F1® Manager will be spent preparing for race weekends, you’ll also need to make the right calls on the big days themselves.
When heading into a race weekend you’ll have to agree to targets with your sponsors, which will see your team financially rewarded if you manage to achieve them. Your drivers will also have their own expectations for how they will perform in the upcoming race, with potential bonuses for finishing in certain positions.
Race weekends are split into three phases: Practice, Qualifying and the Race Day itself. F1® Manager 2024 also features the 2024 Sprint format for relevant Grand Prix weekends, bringing a fresh twist to manage.
Performance targets can apply to either qualifying, the race itself or a hot streak of finishes over multiple races – perform well and you’ll be expected to keep it up.
Before each session you can select the starting tires and fuel load for each car, adjust the car setup and choose which parts to use. Your choices here can have a significant impact on the outcome of the race and will need to be adjusted to meet the conditions and features of each circuit.
Practice
Each weekend contains three 60-minute practice sessions. These are a chance for your drivers to familiarise themselves with the circuit, test out new cart parts and fine-tune car setups for the weekend. The balance you strike in your car setup can be vital in setting your drivers’ confidence for race day, so it’s important to fully use practice sessions to refine your approach.
New in F1® Manager 2024, you can also replace one of your drivers in practice 1 with an affiliate driver, allowing them to gain valuable F1® experience.
Practice sessions can be fully simulated, putting your trust in your team to manage the session to the best of their abilities.
Qualifying
After practice, teams move on to the knock-out format of Qualifying. Over three rounds, drivers compete to set the fastest lap times, with the 5 slowest drivers in Q1 and Q2 being eliminated. The placement of the drivers at the end of Q3 will set the starting grid for race day, with the fasting time beginning in pole position.
Critically, Parc Fermé regulations say teams cannot changing their car setup for performance between Qualifying and race day, with the exception of front wing setup. This means that whatever you enter Q1 with is essentially what you’ll be taking to the race itself.
When kicking off Qualifying, you can set a Run Plan for your drivers, dictating how many laps they should do, what kind of laps they should do and when they should head out to the track.
Your team’s placement in Qualifying can be a deciding factor in how the action on race day plays out, particularly on more Downforce circuits which have limited opportunities to overtake.
Qualifying sessions can also be simulated, however with such high stakes, you might want to consider staying in control.
Race Day
The big day itself! This is where all your preparation during previous sessions and your work off the track will finally come to fruition. Final placement on race day will determine the number of points your team and drivers gain in the standings for the season.
As Team Principal, you’ll also have plenty to do on the day of the race. Between setting a pit stop strategy, making calls on when to push, monitoring the wear on your cars and keeping a close eye on the strategies and performance of the other teams, you’ll still be in the middle of the action.
Learn more about the specifics of leading from the pit wall in our race strategy guide.
New in F1® Manager 2024, you’ll also have to manage the revised implementation of mechanical failures. With varying degrees of severity, these can occur at any point during a race weekend as key components wear.
Some issues can be managed and mitigated during the race by avoiding high risk kerbs or reducing temperatures, whilst others need to be addressed post-session. Mechanical failures also affect your rivals, creating new opportunities and risks as you push your own performance to the limit and aim to capitalise on their misfortune.
For the first time in F1® Manager 2024 you can also simulate races, placing trust in your team to deliver the results you need.
Managing Your People
As Team Principal it’s part of your role to manage the people you work with, making decisions on your key staff members and drivers.
There are four key staff roles that you need on your team:
- Technical Chief – the head of all technical development for your team. They lend their expertise to the mechanical design of all parts.
- Head of Aerodynamics – the head of aerodynamic design for your team. They lend their expertise and quality control to the design of all aerodynamic car parts.
- Sporting Director – the manager of the team’s trackside operations. They are responsible for pit stop performance, and they lead the pit crew on race weekends and during training.
- Race Engineers (x2) – the main contact for drivers during a race. They also relay feedback on the car setup in practice sessions and communicate with the pit crew.
Each of these staff members has a contract length and salary, which will be paid in monthly instalments throughout their contract. You’ll have to keep any eye on these as part of your financial outgoings.
You also have three sub-teams to manage:
- The Engineering Team – they design, manufacture and research car parts.
- The Scouting Team – they scout new drivers and staff.
- The Pit Crew – they can be trained to improve the speed and quality of pit stops.
Finally, you’ll also have to manage your drivers, deciding who sits in your driver seats, overseeing their contracts and guiding them along a development path to improve.
New to F1® Manager 2024, you can also recruit future talent and bring them under your wing as affiliate drivers. Affiliates will look for seats to compete in F2™ and F3™, whilst you’ll take an overview of their progress, set a development plan and weigh up the right time to call them up to compete in FP1 sessions.
Also new in F1® Manager 2024 is the mentality system, a vital new insight for Team Principals. Monitor your drivers and key staff, influencing their performance ratings, development rate and their patience in negotiating with you. Mentality can be affected by their own performance, their opinion of how well you’re doing as their boss and, for drivers, whether their car has the edge over their teammate.
Developing Your Team
Over the course of a season, you’ll be responsible for investing in the development of your team’s facilities. These impact every area of your team, from the quality of your car to the rate your drivers improve.
You have six car development facility types to manage for your team:
- Factory – where race-ready car parts are manufactured. Effects your project capacity and development speed.
- Design Centre – the hub for car part research and design. Effects your project capacity, engineer capacity and the performance of car parts.
- Wind Tunnel – testing centre for aerodynamic car parts. Effects performance of car parts per unit of testing time used.
- CFD Simulator – uses Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) to simulate airflow over aerodynamic car parts. Effects performance of car parts per unit of testing time used.
- Suspension Simulator – test suspension and handling against different surface types. Effects performance of some car parts.
- Car Part Test Centre – test and optimise aerodynamic car parts. Improves performance of some car parts.
You’ll also have to manage three staff facilities:
- Team Hub – a place for staff to take a break and study their craft. Effects how attractive your team is in addition to your staff’s development rate and mentality.
- Scouting Department – where your scouting staff complete their work. Effects your scouting capacity.
- Race Simulator – an advanced race simulator for your drivers to practice and sharpen their skills. Effects your driver’s development rate.
Finally, there are six operations facilities:
- Board Room – Dedicated space for your board of directors to hold meetings. Effects your board’s confidence and team attractiveness.
- Hospitality Area – Impress visitors and potential hires with a state-of-the-art hospitality suite. Effects your team’s marketability and attractiveness.
- Weather Centre – Uses meteorological technology to predict rainfall on race weekends. Effects the accuracy of your weather forecasts.
- Helipad – Provides a luxury helicopter landing space to offer a first-class experience for your most important guests. Effects team marketability, team attractiveness and the amount sponsors will pay out for meeting targets.
- Memorabilia Room – Inspire your staff with a display of your team’s history. Effects team marketability, team attractiveness and mentality.
- Tour Centre – Show off your facilities and boost your income by offering fans a backstage glimpse. Effects team marketability and provides a weekly income.
Building or upgrading facilities will cost time and money but bring long term benefits to your performance – as long as you can continue to afford their monthly upkeep. Facilities will also degrade over time, which will see their effectiveness reduce, so you’ll need to judge when is best to invest in a refurbishment.
As Team Principal you’ll be making the call on which of these facilities to invest in, both to overcome your current obstacles and to prepare for the future.
Creating a Championship Winning Car
At the heart of every F1® team is the car and as Team Principal it’s your job to ensure that your car can perform at its best, both now and in future seasons.
You’ll have to invest in car by initiating development and research projects throughout the season, ensuring you stay ahead of the competition. These projects will seek to optimise how your cars performance against key race stats by creating new and improved parts.
With each circuit benefiting different car stats, and with your competitors completing their own projects, you’ll have to get your investments right if you want to see success on the track.
Learn more about how to build the best car in our car development and research guide.
You’ll also be responsible for managing the maintenance of your cars between races, judging when to replace parts. Balancing the cost cap, stock of parts, wear and tear, plus the time it takes to manufacture new parts, is a skill.
It will be down to you to make judgement calls on when to spend or risk the worst-case scenario of a mechanical failure at critical point in a race.
Watching the Purse Strings
Successfully handling the flow of money into and out of your team’s balance can make the difference between dominating the Constructor’s Championship and being fired by the board mid-season.
Your available budget for the year will be set by your team’s overall rating, performance in previous seasons and sponsorship deals. Over the season you will have two main regular sources of income for your team:
- Each race weekend, you will receive additional income from your sponsors.
- At the start of every month, you will receive a budget payment from the board as well as prize money, and occasionally other ad-hoc income.
However, F1® is an expensive sport, and you will also have regular recurring costs to manage, including:
- Driver and staff contracts
- Research and car development projects
- Part manufacture
- Facility management and growth
Luckily, there are lots of opportunities to make more money in F1® Manager 2024. Taking on additional sponsorship opportunities, investing in facilities that provide income and improving the overall marketability of your team will all help to boost your bottom line and bring more cash in the door.
However, these cash driving activities may place additional strain on your drivers, staff and cars, so you’ll need to weigh up the rewards against the potential costs.
Unfortunately, successfully managing your money in F1® Manger is not quite as simple as keeping your outgoings lower than your income. F1® also features a cost cap which limits what teams can spend on car development each year. Anything that is considered to improve car performance falls within the cost cap restrictions, including:
- Car part development projects
- Monthly upkeep cost of car development facilities
- Salary of race engineers
- Monthly cost of all sub-teams
If you fail to stick to this cost cap, you’ll receive a financial penalty and will see the board lose confidence in your ability as Team Principal.
Satisfying the Board
While you hold a lot of power as Team Principal, you ultimately report to a board of directors. The board will set objectives for the season and for the longer-term performance of the team, rewarding high expectations with a higher budget.
Your overall performance as a Team Principal is measured in the board’s confidence in your ability to meet their objectives. Race results, objective outcomes and financial management will also impact the board’s faith in you.
Each season, the board will hold a review of your performance after the final round. If they don’t believe in your ability to perform as Team Principal, then you run the risk of being fired from your position.
F1® Manager 2024 is Available Now!
With a flood of new features, customisation options and an ever-evolving season, we’ve just scratched the surface on what you’ll be doing in F1® Manager 2024. Trust in your team, invest in the future and don’t underestimate your opponents – you’ll be leading your team to a place in F1® history in no time.
F1® Manager 2024 is available to buy now on Steam, Epic Games Store, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch.