TEAM ORDERS

Fl MANAGER 2022 captures the drama and depth of being a pit boss

- Phil Iwaniuk

NEED TO KNOW 

WHAT IS IT? A licensed F1 management sim from the Elite devs

EXPECT TO PAY £45

DEVELOPER Frontier Developments

PUBLISHER In-house

REVIEWED ON Core i7 9700K, RTX 2080 TI, 16GB RAM

MULTIPLAYER No

LINK bit.ly/3ftPjGB

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 handshakes 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. Bad news for anybody except Max Verstappen – and Frontier Developments.

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’ tire 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’s the chance to find out exactly how our brand of managerial incompetence stacks up against the rest of the grid. In its debut licensed F1 management sim, Frontier Developments conveys both the palm-drenching reactivity of a Sunday in the sport, and the frantic development race happening in between.