F1 Manager 2024 Beginners Guide: 10 Ultimate Tips

The F1 Manager series is back for 2024 with a new entry to the franchise. This year, we’ve seen many improvements to the on-screen action, presentation, gameplay and mechanics.

I’m going to run through our top tips for getting started quickly in this year’s F1 Manager 2024 game. I’ll look at a range of tips for completely new players and the best ways to manage some of the new features.

Learn the fundamental mechanics in F1 Manager 2024

If you follow Formula 1 week to week, you’ll probably understand a lot of the concepts in F1 Manager 2024. This is a game that allows you to develop your car with new parts and improve your team, including managing drivers and other key personnel.

You also act as the strategist during a race weekend, contributing to how your drivers tackle the practice, qualifying and races. The more time your drivers spend on track during practice, the better their preparation will be for the race, however, this will use tyres. And you’ll ideally need some new sets for qualifying and the race.

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Pause often & take your time

Our first real tip is one that I’d recommend with most games, but more so with F1 Manager 2024, which is to pause the game a lot. A lot is going on at most moments in this management sim, and this means the game can feel chaotic at times, or things may pass you by.

When you are in the backend of the game and tinkering with the many mechanics away from the track, you can take as much time as you like. You can analyse data and compare your car’s stats to the opposition’s. You can really research which drivers you wish to pursue and how you want to develop your team.

Things can get a little more tricky when you get to a race weekend. On the track, you’ll be tasked with managing both drivers, from their behaviour on track to the strategy calls for both cars.

Thankfully, there is a pause button, which can give you the time you need to decide what to do at any time during a race, qualifying, or practice session. I’d recommend using this, especially during your first few races, when the mechanics are fresh.

This is particularly helpful when trying to calculate strategies. Working out where your car will come out on track after a pit stop can take some maths, and pausing gives you a breather and the time to make each decision.

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Don’t skip sessions in career mode

Each race weekend consists of multiple sessions, just like real-world Formula 1. You have practice sessions where you can increase your driver’s preparation, work on your car setups and acclimatise them to the track.

Then you have qualifying which dictates your starting position for the race itself. Some weekends also have sprint races which is another, much shorter race.

It can take a while to run through all of these sessions every weekend, and there is a skip option where you let your drivers and team manage things for you. This is ideal if you are looking to run through each year quickly. However, I recommend trying to limit how many sessions you skip.

Opting to control your decisions during practice sessions can make your drivers more prepared for the race, ultimately resulting in better finishing positions.

The keys to practice sessions are meeting practice goals. These are split into three categories, and each one influences your driver preparation percentage. The higher the overall percentage, the faster your driver will generally be during the race.

The three practice goals include;

• Car setup satisfaction
  • Set-up satisfaction is an indicator of how good your car setup is. During practice sessions, you can edit each driver’s setup to try to improve this score. This is a mini-game that is well worth engaging in as it has a big impact on your driver’s speed.
• Track acclimatisation
  • The track acclimatisation percentage increases the more laps your driver completes. To increase this, you should ensure they run often during each session. Running longer stint lengths increases this stat faster.
• Car parts knowledge
  • The car parts knowledge stat is dictated by how much time a driver has spent with specific parts. Upgrading your car will lower this stat, and your driver completing laps with specific parts will increase it.

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Master car setups

Mastering how car setups work is my next top tip. This is a really important mini-game where you try to guess and then nail the car setup for both cars. You have access to a range of different setup options, and each one affects the setup screen in different ways.

The goal is to find the sweet spot for each part of the setup, including oversteer, braking stability, cornering, traction, and straights. Your driver will give you feedback from bad to optimal after each stint.

I won’t touch on this too much in this guide, as I’m planning a complete guide on how to master car setups in F1 Manager 2024.

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Run long stints in practice

When you start a practice run for either driver, you have complete control over the stint duration, tyres and the run plan. I would recommend utilising harder tyres, and setting your run plan to be relatively long.

The longer your driver runs in a single stint, the faster the track acclimatisation will increase, and you have more chance of getting all five set up feedback comments from your driver. You can always cut short a stint by manually pitting if you want to come in and try a new setup, or your driver provides feedback earlier than you had planned.

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Plan your tyre usage throughout a race weekend

Running longer stints during practice does have another benefit, and that can be that you save tyres. If you run two stints in a practice session compared to three, that will help save a set of tyres that can be used during qualifying or the race.

You will generally want to save some new tyres for the race, normally soft tyres. Doing this can give you a big benefit to performance compared to other cars, especially if you use aggressive race strategies.

One way you can also save tyres is to limit how many runs you do through qualifying. If you have a car that can comfortably progress from Q1 to Q2 most weekends, try to perform only a single run during the first part of qualifying. This can save a set of tyres, as can reusing a used set of tyres in Q2 for your first run and then using a new set for your second run.

These are decisions that real-world Formula 1 teams make every race weekend, as there is a considerable upside to saving new tyres for the race.

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Try to split race strategy

When choosing your race strategy, you can decide when each driver will pit, which tyres they’ll use and more. If you’re drivers are starting in completely different places, you can mix up the strategy, and you can also do this when they are starting close on the grid.

Using different strategies for both drivers is beneficial for a few reasons. First of all, pitting on different laps, and for different tyres can reduce how often your drivers are competing for the same bit of track. You don’t really want your drivers fighting each other or holding each other up.

It also lets you split your chances in case you choose the wrong strategy or something happens mid-race. If both your drivers are on the same strategy, and that strategy turns out to be the slowest, both drivers will have poor races. If you mix the strategy, you have the chance that one, if not both strategies could be very good.

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Use aggressive race strategies

My next tip continues the race strategy trend, focusing on the strategy style you should be choosing. You can opt to choose a one stop strategy and manage tyres, much like teams do in real life. This can often show the quickest estimated race time, however, this doesn’t predict for being stuck behind cars or things happening on track.

Often, in F1 Manager 2024, choosing a more aggressive strategy can be faster. It is much easier to overtake in F1 Manager compared to real life. This means opting to stop an additional time compared to other drivers, using softer tyres and trying to pass cars on track by using more aggressive driver commands can be a faster option.

Asking your drivers to push harder during a race does run the risk of them making a mistake. However, this risk is lower than you may think, and is often the better route. Plus, overtaking is much more enjoyable than managing tyre wear. Right!?

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Managing your driver’s mentality

A new feature for this year’s F1 Manager game is driver mentality. This assigns moral, or mentality to each driver and key members of staff. If they are happy, they’ll perform better. Much like driver confidence, good mentality can increase performance for that particular driver or team member.

You can check the mentality for all key personal in the mentality hub. This lets you check each driver and staff member in detail to see exactly why they are happy or not. If a member of staff is unhappy, you can delve into what is causing this, giving you key information on how to improve it.

I would regularly check this screen and try to fix the issues any staff member is having. This can be an easy way to boost the performance from your team members.

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Don’t forget to develop your car

If you like the challenge of choosing a car that is running at the back of the field, say a Williams or a Haas, or if you want to create your own brand new team in F1 Manager 2024, good race results can be hard to come by.

One of the best ways to improve your finishing position during a race is to improve your car. This is done using the F1 Manager 2024 car upgrade system, which is split into parts, from initial development and research through to manufacturing.

At various points throughout the season, you’ll be allocated a range of development hours which you can spend. These are split between CFD and wind tunnel hours, and can be individually allocated to different development projects.

It is important always to use your allocation of CFD and wind tunnel hours before the current ATR period ends. This allocation resets at the start of every new ATR period, so don’t worry about using them all too early.

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Plan your development throughout the season

When deciding which area of your car to develop, it is worth looking at the calendar. Each track throughout a Formula 1 calendar will benefit from specific car characteristics. Monza, for example, benefits from great top speed and DRS efficiency. Monaco is on the other end of this and rewards good aerodynamics.

Look at the calendar and look for blocks of races with similar characteristics. If there are a few races in succession that all benefit from a certain part of your car, it may be worth developing a new car part before this block that can improve your performance in that category.

Ultimately, all development will improve your car. However, this approach can help you tactically plan when to develop different parts.

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Watch our F1 Manager 2024 beginner’s guide video

Conclusion

Hopefully, these top tips for F1 Manager 2024 will make your first few races and first season more manageable and more successful. The most important thing to remember is our first tip, and that is to take your time.

Much like Football Manager and other sim titles, F1 Manager 2024 can feel overwhelming at times. Take your time and enjoy the game at your own pace. Let me know in the comments below if you think I have missed any key tips.

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