Announced as part of the Frontier Unlocked live stream, F1 Manager 2024 will launch upon power-up July 23rdmarking the first time a series of motorsport management SIMs has taken to the grid on a Nintendo system.
Rather than driving cars, the F1 Manager series puts you in the role of team manager responsible for all other aspects of the race outside of the actual driving. You can choose from one of 10 real teams or create your own constructor in a new feature for the 2024 edition that lets you create all sorts of details, including (most importantly) car colors. Stripes make it go faster, you know.
As an officially licensed game (as confirmed by the thousands ‘® in the PR ad), “over 70,000 official team radio lines from real broadcasts” are included, plus you’ll get commentary from David Croft and Karun Chandhok of Sky Sports. If you’re really into it, you can watch each race at regular speed, but there’s an option to speed things up to 16x speed if you want. We also like to imagine the comment is that high, though we doubt it.
Most excitingly for Switch-owning F1 fans, Frontier boasts “complete feature parity” with other platforms, so you’ll get a full-octane feature-wise experience on Switch. Here’s a taste of the official press release plus some screenshots:
Without the roar of engines at team headquarters, players will plot their path to glory by managing the details of every decision. From hiring the staff who work tirelessly to develop the race car and identify new upgrade packages that move his team forward, to negotiating with sponsors and balancing their finances, every decision matters. F1® Manager 2024 introduces deeper thinking about management with a new Mentality system that puts the personality of each driver and employee at the fore. Signing a star lineup can help propel their team forward, but favoring one driver over another can make them unhappy and vulnerable to poaching by a rival team. While in the long term, fans can create their own future by recruiting the hottest talent as Associate Drivers who will continue to hone their racing skills in F2™ and F3™ before considering introducing them to their first F1 session.
The game is out digitally on Switch and other platforms for £29.99 / $34.99 / €34.99, with the Deluxe Edition available for 10 more units of your regional currency, which includes “five additional classically inspired designs for use in the Create A Team, while the other five fictional Race Replay scenarios offer unique challenges for one race.”
There hasn’t been a huge amount of new Formula 1-style racing on the Switch recently, although we did enjoy an unofficial version of New Star GP earlier this year – it remains to be seen if this licensed non-driving sim will be as exciting off the track. Our sister site Push Square last reviewed the 2022 version of F1 Manager and was impressed with Frontier’s series debut, so fingers crossed.
Eager to hit the track and unleash your F1 management skills? Do you like the look of the trailer? Wondering why they didn’t go with the Switch OLED with a bigger screen for a little more “oomph”? Let us know if you’re a fan of the series below.