F1 Manager 22 can be daunting when you first jump in. We have come up with our 10 top tips to help you master F1 Manager 22, and lead your team to the front.
Disclaimer: Some of the links on this page may be affiliate links. We earn a commission from any sale after clicking an affiliate link. Find out more.
F1 Manager 22 brings a completely different way of experiencing Formula 1 compared to F1 22. It puts you behind the pit wall, and in the pants of the team principal.
You’ll have a lot of important decisions to make both on and off the track, and it can be scary when you first jump in.
But we have spent a lot of time with the game, and have come up with our 10 top tips for mastering F1 Manager 22.
We have created a full video explaining all of our top tips if you’d rather watch and listen to a video. If not, continue to read below for all of our top ten tips!
Simply put, there is a lot of management and micro-management available at all times in F1 Manager 22. After all, that’s the whole premise of this game!
It can be daunting during your first few sessions and race weekends. But the best part of F1 Manager 22 is that you can take it at your own pace. You’re never rushed into doing anything and can pause the game at any point.
And I’d recommend doing just that. Pausing the game will let you take in all of the data that is presented to you. From lap times to tyre and car wear, through to managing your driver’s pace and strategy. There is a lot to look at and take in!
I’d recommend pausing during practice sessions to manage your driver’s run plan. And definitely take your time during qualifying to ensure your sending your cars out at the most optimal time.
If you are excited to jump right into the race, you may look to simulate the practice sessions. But our advice is to not do this!
By simulating the practice sessions you are leaving some performance bonuses on the table.
During the practice sessions, you can earn up to 15 performance bonuses. These are rewarded for completing certain goals during practice sessions. These are broken down into 3 different categories;
Your driver’s car parts knowledge is a permanent bonus that is rewarded when your driver knows the car well. The more time your driver spends racing a car with certain car parts, the higher this percentage will be.
As you introduce new and improved car parts throughout the season, the knowledge will drop down and have to be re-earned.
When your driver is 100% happy with the car parts, you will earn the 3 performance bonuses.
Track acclimatisation is your driver’s knowledge of the track. This starts at 0% every race weekend and goes up the more time your driver spends on track.
Normally, if you have participated in all 3 practice sessions, your driver’s acclimatisation should be close to or at 100% earning you another 3 performance bonuses.
The best way to increase this is to perform long runs during practice. The longer the run stint, the faster the track acclimatisation will increase.
The final, and most important part of earning bonuses is the setup confidence. This is how confident your driver is in the car setup.
You can adjust the car setup through all 3 practice sessions to help you really nail the optimal race setup. As you progress towards getting 100% confidence in the setup, the performance bonus points will increase.
When you are at 100% confidence, you’ll earn all 9 performance bonuses.
If you’re short on time you can simulate any session, letting the computer control your driver’s run plans during each session.
This will reward you with some driver performance bonuses going into qualifying and the race. But it will rarely be optimised. You will almost always be able to earn higher performance bonuses from managing the practice sessions yourself.
Before every race you get a chance to really prepare for the upcoming event. And you should use this time wisely to do your research on the upcoming race.
You can check the circuit info for a range of helpful information about the race that is up next. And you can also check the circuit information for future events as well, which can be helpful for planning future car development.
The circuit information will give you some important that you should take note of. You’ll be able to see information such as track abrasiveness which is an indicator of how fast your tyres will wear, as well as pit lane time loss.
Knowing this will help you plan how many pit stops are likely needed, and how much time you’ll lose each time you pit.
It’s also important to check the expected weather report. Now, this isn’t always accurate but it is good knowledge to bare in mind so you aren’t surprised mid-race with a quick change in weather.
Another important factor to pay attention to is the car attributes screen. This will show you a set of recommendations for attributes that are important at the upcoming circuit.
If you have a car that is good in the areas with blue and green thumb icons, you are likely to perform better at that specific track. This is helpful to know when developing new car parts, as you can choose to develop parts that will be influential on upcoming tracks.
It can be useful to see the next 3 or 4 tracks to see what car attributes they recommend most. Then you can better plan future car upgrades.
The other important area to check is the expected strategy tab. This will show a set of three different strategies that are likely to be in play at the upcoming race.
You certainly can create your own strategy, but these three recommendations are often the quickest strategies for a race. It’s important to note the tyre compounds that they recommend, so you can plan which tyres to use in practice and which to keep for the race.
As I mentioned earlier, the easiest way to improve your driver’s track acclimatisation is to run long stints in practice. The longer the run plan, the faster your driver will earn their track acclimatisation.
So, I’d always recommend setting up your first run during most race weekends to be a long 20-25 lap stint on hard tyres.
Now, your driver will only really need around 15 laps to reach 5/5 setup comments. So the extra 5-10 laps will be solely to increase the track acclimatisation.
However, if you run two 15-lap run stints during each practice session, you may just miss getting 100% track acclimatisation. And in turn, you’ll be leaving valuable driver performance bonuses on the table.
Practice sessions are not really about setting the fastest lap times. Yes, it is good to see where your pace is with other cars but there are no advantages to running aggressively to top the time sheets.
Instead, practice is about increasing driver confidence and nailing your car setups. Both of these things can be done even when telling your drivers to drive less aggressively.
The main benefit of driving less aggressively during practice, or any session for that matter. Is that they won’t take as much life out of the tyres.
This is important during a race weekend, as you’ll need to ensure you manage your tyre allocation to ensure you have enough tyres come qualifying and the race.
If you burn through all of your soft tyres during the practice sessions, you’ll be in trouble in qualifying as you really need fresh, unused tyres to maximise your qualifying pace.
And you may also want to save a set of medium tyres for the race as well depending on your strategy. Yes, you do always get a new set of medium and hard tyres for the race. But some strategies may require you to run two sets of mediums during a full race distance, so keeping one set spare can be a solid plan.
I won’t touch on car setups too much as I have created a whole guide talking about this. But I will say that your driver’s car setups are one of the most important parts of any race weekend.
Getting your car setup right will grant you the highest number of driver performance bonuses. So maximising your setup is important.
Changing the car setups is a whole mini-game in itself, and one that I talk about in detail in my F1 Manager 22 setup guide.
Check out the setup guide here.
One of the most important elements to manage during a race is your driver’s tyres. Keeping life in your tyres can help you elongate certain race stints giving you an advantage later in the race.
And maximising your pace on certain tyres will ensure you aren’t leaving any tyre performance on the table by the time you come in to pit.
The goal really is to reduce your driver’s aggressiveness when there is little progress to be made, such as being stuck behind a few cars. And then you should look to increase aggressiveness if you are in open air with nobody in front and if you have spare tyre life to burn.
You can quickly track and see how well your drivers are managing their tyres by clicking on the pace box. This will show the driver’s current wear levels compared to the predicted wear.
The Best F1 24 Racing WheelsIf the white bar is above the coloured block, it means your driver is doing a good job and preserving tyre life. If the white bar is below the coloured block, it means they are wearing their tyres too fast.
Always keep an eye on this during a race to ensure you are maximising your tyre life and performance.
Ensuring you choose the best strategy for the race is very important in any Formula 1 race. It can be the difference between having to pit an extra time, or being stuck managing your tyres throughout a race.
At the start of each race, you’ll get 3 recommended strategies, which are often the quickest way to complete a race. These will show you the expected tyre wear, as well as when your drivers will need to pit.
You can change these by editing any strategy, and changing how aggressive a driver will drive through a specific race stint. This can help you decide whether you want to be aggressive at the start or end of a race, and which tyres you will start a race on.
During the race, your engineer will pop up and prompt you when it is time to pit your car. And you can go along with this or choose to ignore the call.
If your driver has a lot of tyre life left, you may ask him to stay out on track longer. Or if your driver is stuck in traffic, you could ask them to pit early to try and gain track position.
Managing your strategy throughout a race is one of the funnest parts of F1 Manager 22, and something that you should experiment with each race.
It is also recommended to split your race strategy for each driver. Putting them both on different strategies will ensure they don’t hold each other up on the track or in the pit lane. And can allow one to benefit if you chose a bad strategy with the other driver.
During each season, every team gets a limited amount of testing hours. The testing is broken into two parts, MAU hours and wind tunnel hours.
These can both be used to research new car parts to help you develop your car throughout the season. It is important to note that the MAU hours and wind tunnel hours reset every 2 months or so, and this is indicated by the ATR period indicator.
Try to ensure that you are using all of your testing hours before each ATR period runs out, as they won’t carry over to the next period and you will lose vital testing time.
Essentially, don’t be too conservative with your testing.
Each season, every team has a budget cap that they have to work to. Many teams that aren’t competing at the front of the grid, won’t reach the budget cap, meaning they can spend as much of their budget as they like throughout a season.
Front-running teams and those with high budgets will have to ensure they don’t spend over the budget cap.
Almost everything you do off track requires a cost and will come from your overall budget. From manufacturing new car parts to upgrading your facilities.
You should pay attention to your budget and the budget cap to make sure you aren’t overspending.
However, you do need to spend to move forward on the grid. You will need to upgrade your facilities to increase your effectiveness on and off the track. And you’ll need to manufacture new car parts to improve your car.
All upgrades for your car and facilities will be beneficial. But there are some that are more important than others. Ensuring that you have enough spare parts is important because if you run out, you won’t be able to compete in a race weekend.
Also, improving your facilities will help you in the long run by allowing you to research more projects at once, and recruit extra engineers to help with design projects.
F1 Manager 22 is a huge game with a lot of different mechanics. But hopefully, these top tips will help you climb to the front and challenge for wins and championships.
Let me know in the comments below any tips that you have, and whether you agree with the tips I’ve mentioned.
You can use the links below to shop for your favourite sim racing products, or for any products that we may have recommended. These links are affiliate links, and will earn us a small commission, with no additional cost for you.
Rich is the co-founder, and one of the main F1 setup creators and content writers for SimRacingSetups. With over a decade of experience as a graphic designer, marketing director, competitive sim racer and avid motorsport fan, Rich founded SimRacingSetup.com to share his passion and knowledge of sim racing and Formula 1 with other sim racers.
View all articles written by Rich
View Best F1 24 Racing Wheels
Best PS5 Racing Wheels
Low Fuel Motorsport is ACC’s answer to a competitive iRacing-style online racing environment. LFM can be… Read More »Best LFM ACC Car Setups: Updated Weekly
Asetek has just announced they are celebrating three years of producing sim racing hardware. And what… Read More »Get A Free Set Of Asetek Pagani Sim Racing Pedals
Baku is the first street circuit on the Formula 1 calendar since Monaco and Canada, and… Read More »F1 24 How To Be Faster At Baku (Azerbaijan Track Guide)
