F1 Manager 2024: Research vs Design Guide

Car development is crucial for succeeding in F1 Manager 2024 across a season or multiple seasons. Learning the car development system is something you should look to do right away. Discovering how to design new car parts and manufacture them efficiently will help you save money and perform better in races.

Our comprehensive development guide for F1 Manager 2024 covers car development in great detail. I recommend reading or watching that guide to learn the ins and outs of development.

However, when designing new car parts, you also have the option to research new parts. How is this different in F1 Manager 2024, and should you design or research? I’ll show you exactly when and how to research car parts in this year’s game.

How does researching work in F1 Manager 2024

Researching is very similar to the design process in this year’s F1 Manager game. Many of the principles are similar such as choosing your design focus and the parts you wish to research.

The differences between design and research

There are similarities between the design and research processes. However, there are some key differences that result from choosing to either design or research new parts.

The big difference is that researching new parts won’t give you the ability to manufacture those parts right away. Instead, researching will give you boosts for the next season, giving you an advantage in the long run.

Design

Designing a new car part will give you immediate access to manufacturing the new part as soon as the design is complete. Once the new part is manufactured, you will be able to assign it to either of your cars for an immediate performance boost.

You should design new car parts to actively improve your current car. New parts will lead to better performance and allow you to effectively continue to grow and compete against your rivals.

Research

The goal of research is to boost your engineer’s expertise. Rather than improving the current car parts you have or that you can manufacture, researching new parts will increase your engineers’ expertise bonus. The higher the expertise, the greater the impact your new car designs will have in the future

Technical regulation changes

Every season, you will receive notifications about regulation changes. These changes will normally negatively affect your car’s performance. They do this by applying a penalty to your engineer’s expertise in specific areas.

If you don’t research and increase your engineer’s expertise back up, you will be starting the following year at a disadvantage. Research in F1 Manager 2024 doesn’t unlock until new technical changes have been agreed upon. Once the results of a technical change have happened, you can start researching as well as designing.

You can see the effect of any upcoming regulation changes from the research screen or the email containing the technical changes. Next to the affected parts of your car, you will see a percentage in red. This is the penalty you will get to any new car part designs that influence that area.

The goal of research is to boost your engineer’s expertise to the point that mitigates this penalty that you’ll receive. The higher the expertise, the larger performance boost you’ll receive, meaning you can combat any technical regulation changes by researching effectively.

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Should you design or research?

You won’t be able to research at the beginning of any season. The option will be greyed out until the first technical regulation changes are agreed upon. This means you can only design new parts initially.

This is fine, as at the start of any new season, you will want to aggressively design new parts. Improved car parts will give your cars a performance boost, and this can help you finish ahead of your competition and meet sponsor and driver goals early.

Performing well at the start of the year will open up options for you later on in the season. If you meet your overall sponsor goals early in the year, you can switch to researching next year’s car earlier. This will give you a benefit over some of the competition who may start researching at a later date.

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When should you start researching?

Making a decision of when to switch from designing to researching will always be influenced by a range of different factors.

These factors that influence when you should start researching can include;

• How well you’re doing in the championship.
• Are you in a close championship fight?
• Are you competing for the drivers or constructors championships?
• How much of the cost cap do you have remaining?
• How long is left in the season?

My advice is to spend the first four or five months designing new car parts. Even if the technical regulations for the following season are agreed upon early, you should keep designing new car parts.

After you have met any season goals or feel comfortable in the championship standings, you can start to research. It can be easier to start researching early if you are well clear of any championship rivals and you aren’t in a close battle.

Always reserve some cost cap for researching

Researching new parts costs just as much as designing new parts, so ensuring you have the remaining money to research towards the end of the season is crucial.

Always keep an eye on your cost cap throughout the season, and try to split your design and research costs fairly evenly. At the start of the season, focus on designing and manufacturing new parts. But keep enough cash for the second half of the season where you’ll be mainly researching for the following season.

The good part of researching is that there aren’t any manufacturing costs involved like there are with designing. You won’t need to start manufacturing researched car parts until the following season, as this is much more about increasing your engineer’s expertise.

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Final thoughts

Researching in F1 Manager 2024 may initially seem like a strange choice and not a great investment. You won’t see any results from your research until the following season, meaning it may be tempting to continue to develop new car parts for the current season.

However, if you do neglect to research next year’s car, you can start the following season with a significant disadvantage compared to your rivals. I would recommend balancing research and design throughout the season, with an emphasis on research later in the year.

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