TEAM ORDERS

F1 MANAGER 2022 CAPTURES THE DRAMA AND DEPTH OF BEING A PIT BOSS

F1 MANAGER 2022 PS4/5, XBOX ONE/SERIES

If last season in Formula One was all about the driving, this year, it's about the management. Gone are the days of Lewis and Max fighting bitterly for every inch of tarmac, sending each other off into runoff areas and exchanging the least sincere, most perfunctory handshakes MANAGER in the pre-podium room this side of a Premier League dugout.

Instead of a historic, headline-grabbing on-track duel, 2022 has given us a season of baffling managerial incompetence. Because when you watch the throttle pedal come loose on Leclerc's Ferrari while he's five laps from victory at Austria, or find yourself shouting at Mercedes' tyre strategy in a safety-car-laden Zandvoort, your natural inclination is to think you can do better. 'Stay out, you fools!' you say to no one. 'Let them blink first!'

Well, now is your chance to find out exactly how your own brand of managerial incompetence stacks up against the rest of the grid. This new game conveys both the palm-drenching reactivity of a Sunday in the sport, and the frantic development race happening in between.

It even holds the official F1 licence, so you're managing real teams and drivers, and even scouting the talent pool down as far as real F2 and F3 prospects. For this sub-genre, that's new. It lends some obsessive Football Manager-style database trawling, and that's almost always fun.

Feel the power

As team boss, you're in charge of everything from signing the drivers who'll sit in your car to the design and manufacture of that car's component parts. On race day, pit crews jump into action at your say-so, and even the amount of money sponsors pay you depends on the promises you make to them before each race weekend.