F1 Manager 2023 Beginners Guide: 10 Tips To get Started

F1 Manager is back for a second year, with improvements across the board in F1 Manager 23. There are new features and some features have been tweaked to make them function a little better.

But whether this is your second F1 Manager game or your first, jumping into a new career mode can be slightly overwhelming with all of the different options and features available.

F1 Manager 23 Top Tips For Beginners

In this guide, I’ll run through my top 10 beginner tips for F1 Manager 23. These tips can be applied both in career mode and the new race replay mode.

There are a lot of important decisions and gameplay features that all add up to create the optimal F1 Manager 23 experience.

The sheer amount of information and content can be a little overwhelming, but the main thing with F1 Manager 23 is to just take your time. And that leads me perfectly to our first top tip.

Watch our F1 Manager 23 beginner’s guide video

Below is a complete beginner’s guide video for F1 Manager 23. In the video, I’ll run through every point that I talk about below. If you prefer to read this guide, continue reading past the video.

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Pause often & take your time

With so much going on in F1 Manager 23, it is important to take everything at your own speed. Try not to rush through the off-track activities such as developing your car, your drivers or your facility.

And equally, take your time while participating in a Grand Prix weekend. F1 Manager 23 allows us to pause the game at any time, which can be important when faced with split-second decisions.

Unlike real-world race engineers who need to make decisions on when to pit and what the best race strategy is in real-time. We get the luxury of being able to pause the action to make critical decisions in F1 Manager 23.

This is useful if it starts to suddenly rain, or if there is a safety car. In these scenarios, I would recommend pausing the game instantly to assess what just happened or what the best strategy call is.

F1 Manager 23 has introduced mid-session saves for the first time meaning you can save your progress throughout a race weekend. This only emphasises taking your time even more, as you aren’t under pressure to complete a race in a single game session.

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Use Race Replay mode to practice strategy

Another new feature that has been added to F1 Manager 23 is the Race Replay game mode. This allows you to jump into any race that has already happened and try to alter the result.

You can take any team on the grid and start in the actual position they started for a race. From there, you can set the race strategy for both cars and take control of the team throughout a race.

While this is a fun addition to the game and a quicker way to jump in and start racing, it also serves as the perfect testing ground.

In Race Replay, there are far less consequences for messing up a race strategy compared to in career mode. So why not use this game mode to both get accustomed to the mechanics of F1 Manager 23 during a race, and also test different strategies?

You can replay the same race multiple times, choosing different strategies each time to see how the outcome changes. This can give you a lot of information to take into the career mode, such as how tyres behave at different points through a race.

You can even use the Race Replay mode to run a practice race before you reach that event in career mode. Say you’re coming up to Monaco in your career. Why not head into a Race Replay and play through a Monaco race to test your strategy?

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Don’t skip sessions in career mode

One important area of a race weekend in F1 Manager 23 are the practice sessions. While in F1 23, we might skip the practice sessions to jump right into qualifying or the race. In F1 Manager 23, these sessions are crucial to your success in a race.

The practice sessions let you tweak your car setup, which should be your main focus during the three practice sessions. Improving your car setup for both cars as well as your driver’s confidence will help them perform better during the race.

There are a range of bonuses that you can earn during a practice session, which are dictated by the driver preparation percentage. The closer to 100% you get the driver preparation, the more of a bonus that the driver will have heading into qualifying and the race.

The driver preparation is a combination of three different practice goals. The three different categories that increase driver preparation are;

• Car setup satisfaction
• Track acclimatisation
• Car parts knowledge

Car set-up satisfaction

The car setup satisfaction is the most crucial bonus to focus on as it offers the highest performance bonuses. This can be earned by adjusting your driver’s car setup throughout the three sessions.

The closer to 100% you get with each driver’s car setup, the higher your driver preparation will be.

Track acclimatisation

The track acclimatisation is the overall knowledge of the track for each driver. This will increase simply by your driver spending time on track.

The more laps they get in, the faster your track acclimatisation will rise. Also, if you run longer stints during practice, the track acclimatisation will increase at a faster rate than multiple short stints.

This is one of the easier bonuses to unlock, and you should really be at 100% track acclimatisation for both drivers by the end of practice 3.

Car parts knowledge

Finally, your driver’s car parts knowledge is the final performance bonus. And this is more of a passive bonus, as it is dictated by how long your driver spends with the parts on their car.

The more laps a driver gets in using a specific car part, the higher their knowledge will be. For example, if you give one driver an all-new front wing, floor and rear wing, it will lower their car parts knowledge.

Then, over time and the more that driver races with those specific parts, the higher the car parts knowledge will be.

Again, once your driver is 100% happy with the car parts, you will earn additional driver preparation.

Does simulating sessions increase driver preparation?

I would always recommend actively playing each practice session if possible. However, if you are short on time, you can simulate and skip a session entirely.

This will move on to the next session, but the skipped session will be simulated. This will have your driver run through their practice program and will reward some driver preparation.

The catch is that the bonuses for track acclimatisation and car setup will be limited compared to if you played the session. You will always earn less bonuses when simulating a session.

How driver confidence works in F1 Manager 23

New to F1 Manager 23 is a stat called driver confidence. This will change throughout the weekend and dictates how well your driver will perform during a race.

Higher confidence will lead to more success when asked to perform certain tasks such as an overtake. If your driver has lower confidence, they are less likely to succeed when asked to perform tasks. And driving too aggressively can cause them to make a mistake easier than a driver with high confidence.

Much like performance bonuses in last year’s game, driver confidence applies a temporary stat boost or penalty to your drivers.

You can improve driver confidence by meeting your practice goals that I mentioned. The track acclimatisation, car setup satisfaction and car parts knowledge will all help increase your driver’s confidence.

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Always complete a long first stint in practice

While talking about performance bonuses, one of the best ways to give yourself a headstart on both car setup and track acclimatisation is to run a long stint at the start of each practice session.

A longer first stint will give your driver’s track acclimatisation a real boost right away. The best way of doing this is to set the driver’s stint length to around 20-25 and choose a set of hard tyres.

This will always trigger the driver’s full set of setup feedback as well after around 15 or so laps. However, don’t be tempted to pit your driver right away. Instead, keep them out until you hit around lap 20-25 to grab the track acclimatisation bonus.

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Try to save tyres during a practice session

Your main goals during each practice session should be to get your driver as much track time as possible while working on your car setup. This generally involves your driver being out on track a lot, and this in turn uses a lot of tyres.

During a race weekend in F1 Manager 23, you only get a set amount of tyres. Generally, you’ll only have a few sets of each tyre compound as well. So making sure you have enough tyres for both qualifying and the race is important.

Generally, you should aim for at least one brand new, unused set of medium tyres saved for the race. And at least two sets of unused soft tyres for qualifying. The more the better though!

So, which tyres should you run during a practice session? Well, try to use each tyre to its fullest during a practice session. For example, you can get two relatively long stints out of a single set of hard tyres. Don’t just use them once and then move on to a new set.

Also, you can set both drivers to not push while on track. Having them both run less aggressively will help to reduce tyre wear. And this will let you get more laps out of each set of tyre.

Try to limit how many sets of tyres you use during a practice session, and use each tyre to its fullest. Remember, practice sessions are not about setting fast lap times so you can afford to run less aggressively on older tyres.

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Master car setups

While I’m still talking about practice sessions, I want to touch on car setups. This is one of the most crucial areas that can affect how your drivers perform during a race.

A good setup can be the difference between grabbing some points or finishing towards the back of the pack. So it is vitally important to learn how to get both driver’s car setups as close to 100% as possible.

The process of mastering car setups in F1 Manager 23 is a mini-game in itself. Essentially, it’s a guessing game, where you have to try and tweak each car setup option so that all fall within the perfect window.

I won’t touch on this too much as mastering car setups is a process that will take 15 minutes to talk about all on its own. And, thankfully, I have created a specific guide talking about car setups in F1 Manager 23.

In this guide, I’ll show you how to get the perfect car setup every time. I’ll also show you my exact process for tweaking the car setups during a race weekend. View our F1 Manager 23 car setup guide here.

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Choosing the right race strategy

Now that I’ve discussed the best way to navigate through the practice sessions, I want to talk about the races in F1 Manager 23. And that starts with the race strategy screen.

Outside of mastering your car setup during practice sessions, the race strategy is the next most important thing to get right. Choosing when to pit your car, when to push and how to react to the cars around you is vitally important to a successful race.

At the beginning of every race, you’ll be presented with a few different car strategies. These are pre-defined and can give you a good starting point for choosing your specific strategy.

The race strategy screen will show your predicted tyre life throughout a stint along with the estimated race time. This time is the overall time it’ll take to complete the race using that strategy.

One important thing to note when choosing or customising your race strategy is your starting position. Where your driver is starting on the grid should heavily dictate your strategy.

If you are nearer the front of the grid, you may want to opt for softer tyres to start the race to maximise your race start. However, if you’re starting nearer the rear of the grid, you may look to choose a longer first stint on slower tyres.

The benefit of this is that if you’re likely to be stuck behind slower cars, running a slower and longer first stint can preserve your faster tyres for the end of the race when you’re likely to have more space on the track.

While changing your strategy, you can also set how aggressively your driver will push each set of tyres. This is useful to ensure your driver is pushing or driving aggressively at the start of the race. You can always change this manually during a race though, so don’t feel locked into a certain driving style for a whole stint.

During a race, things will always change, and you may have to adapt your race strategy. If your driver is saving tyre life, you may want to extend your stint and pit later. Or you may look to undercut a slower car in front of you.

These are decisions that you can look to make during a race. And also, if you’re ever feeling pressured to make a quick decision, remember our first point about pausing the game and taking your time.

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Managing your tyres throughout a race

Moving on from the race strategy, managing your driver’s pace and tyre wear during a race should be your primary focus during a race session. Making sure your driver doesn’t push his tyres too hard and wear them out too early is important.

However, if your driver is performing well on a set of tyres and making them last better than expected you could do two things. You could either extend your stint and pit later, or you can set your driver to push harder and drive more aggressively. This will burn some tyre life, but also increase their pace.

Using the tyre life display mid-race should be something you look at often. The horizontal bars will show if a driver is doing better or worse on tyre wear than expected.

If the white bar is trending higher than the coloured block, it means they are wearing their tyres slower which is a good thing. If the white line is below the coloured block, the tyres are wearing faster than expected.

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Prioritise car testing between races

Moving away from the race weekend, I want to touch on a couple of tips regarding life away from the track. And the first thing I want to talk about is testing and development.

Testing is where you can develop new car parts which will increase your performance throughout a season. Every year you will get a certain allowance of testing hours which is divided in to MAU hours and wind tunnel hours.

This allowance resets every two months or so and is defined by the ATR period. The length of the current ATR period can be seen in the development screen.

You should always use all of your development time before the ATR period expires, as it doesn’t carry over and you will simply lose potential to develop and research new parts.

You can choose to develop new parts and use a combination of wind tunnel and MAU hours to improve the part you are developing.

I would recommend using the development in big batches to develop car parts that have a bigger impact on performance. This will reward you with better performance over time than researching smaller improvements more often.

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Plan your season between each race

Our final tip is all about planning your season in advance. You can see all of the upcoming races at any time. And you can delve into each race to see how each track differs.

The circuit information screen will show you which car parts have the biggest impact on performance at each track. This information will really let you plan your development strategy in advance.

For example, if you know that in a few races time, you have tracks such as Spa-Francorchamps and Monza which are two high-speed circuits. You may want to develop some car parts targeted towards improving high-speed performance.

Planning ahead like this can help you structure your car development throughout the year, and really maximise your performance at specific circuits.

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Conclusion

Hopefully, these F1 Manager 23 beginners tips will help you navigate certain areas of this year’s F1 Manager game. Mastering each area of career mode from car development to race strategy takes time, but will lead you towards winning that elusive drivers and constructors championship.

While playing F1 Manager 23, always remember my first tip, take your time and enjoy the game at your own pace.

Let me know in the comments below of any tips you have and think that I’ve missed.

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