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Announced as part of the Frontier Unlocked livestream, F1 Manager 2024 will launch on Switch on 23rd July, marking the first time the motorsport management sim series has made the starting grid on Nintendo’s system.
Rather than driving the cars, the F1 Manager series puts you in the shoes of a team manager responsible for every other aspect of the race outside the actual piloting. You can choose from one of the 10 real-life teams or, alternatively, create your own constructor in a new feature for the 2024 edition which lets you craft all sorts of details, including (most importantly) the colours of the cars. Stripes make it go faster, you know.
As an officially licensed game (as the thousands of ‘®’s in the PR blurb attest), “over 70,000 official team radio lines from the real broadcast” are included, plus you get commentary from Sky Sports’ David Croft and Karun Chandhok. You can watch each race at the regular speed if you’re really keen, but there’s the option to accelerate things up to 16x speed if you prefer. We like to imagine the commentary going all high-pitched too, although we doubt it.
Most excitingly for Switch-owning F1 fans, Frontier is boasting “complete feature parity” with other platforms, so you’re getting the full octane experience on Switch, feature-wise. Here’s a taster of the official press release, plus some screenshots:
Away from the roar of the engines at the team’s headquarters, players will plot their route to glory by directing the details of every decision. From hiring the personnel working tirelessly to develop a race-winning car and identifying new upgrade packages to push their team forward, to negotiating with sponsors and balancing their finances, every decision matters. F1® Manager 2024 introduces deeper management considerations with the new Mentality system, which brings each driver and staff member’s personality to the fore. Signing a star-studded line-up might help push their team forwards, but favouring one driver over another may leave them unhappy and susceptible to a poaching attempt by a rival team. Whilst in the long-term, fans can craft their own future by recruiting the hottest talent as Affiliate drivers who will continue to hone their racecraft in F2™ and F3™, before weighing up when to introduce them to their first F1 session.
The game is launching digitally on Switch and other platforms for £29.99 / $34.99 / €34.99, with a Deluxe Edition available for 10 more of your regional currency units which includes “five additional classically inspired patterns for use in Create A Team mode, whilst an additional five fictional Race Replay scenarios offer unique single-race challenges.”
There hasn’t been a huge amount of new Formula 1-style racing available on Switch in recent times, although we did enjoy New Star GP‘s unofficial take earlier this year — it remains to be seen if this licensed non-driving sim will be as thrilling off the track. Our sister site Push Square last reviewed the 2022 version of F1 Manager and came away impressed by Frontier’s series debut, so fingers crossed.
Eager to get trackside and unleash your F1 management skills? Like the look of the trailer? Wondering why they didn’t use a bigger-screened Switch OLED for a bit more ‘oomph’? Let us know if you’re a fan of the series below.