Welcome back to Frontier HQ Team Principals!
Whilst you’ve been delivering pole positions and World Championships, we’ve been hard at work in the factory since launch, and we’re now excited to lift the covers off Update 1.9, the next major update for F1® Manager 2024. We’re adding some highly requested new features to the game, so let’s get straight into the details!
Pit Lane Starts
Pitlane starts are now fully supported in F1® Manager 24! Using the real-world regulations as a base, these bring an additional level of authenticity to the game. Parc fermé rules take effect from whenever your car first goes on track during Q1 or SQ1; a strict list of rules is then applied:
- Front wing angle can be changed.
- Like-for-like parts can be swapped (For example, a broken wing can be replaced with another wing of the same design.)
- Swapping non-like-for-like parts incurs a pitlane start.
- Component changes will result in a pitlane start (i.e. engines, gearboxes etc).
- All other setup changes will incur a pitlane start.
- Cars starting from the pitlane may not exit the pitlane until they receive the greenlight, which is only given when the starting grid has fully passed the exit of the pitlane.
We're excited to see how you navigate these new limitations, but don't worry about keeping your F1 rulebook to hand, you'll be fully prompted before making a change which will incur a penalty! Can you turn a bad qualifying or mechanical fault into a tactical advantage later in the season?
We've also gone back over the Starting Grid scenarios from this season and ensured any cars which started from the pitlane in the real races now also start from the pitlane in the game to ensure you're able to challenge yourself as you seek to replay the races from the official 2024 season so far, can you make points from the pitlane?
Driver Development Focus
You can now focus drivers into distinct areas of development in order to use their skills to benefit your team. This includes your affiliates, giving you an extra reason to seek out the right people to fill your affiliate slots with the skills to enhance your team how you see fit. There are three ways you can choose to deploy the drivers in your stable...
Driver Development: Drivers continue to focus on themselves and increasing their own abilities.
Car Development: Drivers use their skills to boost the research & design of car parts, reducing the time it takes to complete that research. They also contribute to increasing preparedness heading into races, giving a setup boost. As you'd expect, the amount your driver can assist is based on their expertise; more experienced drivers will have a larger effect than drivers new to the series. The effects of this focus stack, meaning you can deploy up to three of your drivers to give a bigger boost! However, bear in mind that drivers focusing on car development will temporarily sacrifice their development rates to do so.
Marketability: Use your drivers’ marketability to help you meet your sponsorship goals more easily. Do you choose to send your young hotshots out or use your more seasoned drivers to make a bigger impact? Meeting your sponsorship goals more easily means less distraction to the wider team at the cost of reducing that driver's focus. Drivers focusing on marketability gain an increase in their own marketability temporarily while focusing on this area while dropping their own development rate.
The intensity of a driver’s contribution to these areas increases over time, you'll need to keep drivers focused for at least a month to see the full effect, moving a driver to a new focus will reset the intensity of their contribution, so choose when to deploy certain drivers carefully to maximise the impact and minimise the disruption.
Team suitability
We know the task of recruiting the right people for your team can be tricky – this is where the brand new "Team Suitability" rating comes in to help. This suitability rating is uncovered as part of the process when scouting potential staff members and gives you a broad view of if this person is right for your team whilst listing out the reasoning. A variety of factors, including rating vs current staff members, salary, buy out, Championship standing and more are taken into consideration to help give you an initial indication of how well this person could fare within your team. The results are dynamic, and things like your own team’s bank balance and Championship standing will affect the rating, as always, it's you as Team Principal who makes the final decision, but this new feature will give you a basic underlying idea of your compatibility.
In addition to informing you how potential staff might fit into your team, all staff members in the game now have an opinion of your team. This means you will now find staff members in other teams might not be interested in hearing a contract proposal from you! If you are a backmarker team, don't expect staff in a Championship winning team to be willing to take a risk on joining you, even if your bank balance is flush! Every staff member's opinion is unique to them, so you may find soon-to-be out of contract staff are more open to joining teams outside their comfort zone. Just like Team Suitability; their views of you change dynamically, so make sure you're best placed to pick up key staff through the year as opinions change.
Feedback on Contracts in the game world
"Silly season" comes to F1® Manager! We've added some additional content to emulate what goes on in the world of F1® within F1® Manager. Your scouting team and the F1® journalists have been busy and will send you some new high-value information to help you navigate the world of signings and contracts that was previously behind closed doors!
Contract rumours: You'll now receive a condensed report from your scouting team about high value targets that are currently in negotiations with other teams. This is your chance to act quickly and convince someone you might have your eye on, before they sign for a rival. Your team even has the scouting reports ready for you to jump in and start negotiations if you see fit.
Summer Signings: When other teams make key signings, you'll now find out about when it happens and be able to plan accordingly. Find out about those big-name signings in the news just as you'd expect in real life, and immerse yourself in all the off-track action.
Engine payments
We've been listening to your feedback and we're making a slight change to how you pay for your engines: instead of a lump sum payable on the 1st of January, we're now making this instalment-based to spread the cost over the year, payable on the 1st of each month. This should help budgeting for your team and ensure you don't have a difficult start to the year especially in season two when your engine payment is first due. This will take effect from the next new season you experience in the game.
Update 1.9 to F1® Manager 24 arrives on Monday 18th November, alongside a host of fixes and changes – check out the full patch notes on the day, and we’ll see you on the grid.