F1 Manager 2023 devs on why Race Replay is a game changer
F1 Manager 2023 is careering towards the chequered flag as the team at Frontier gears up for the second yearly instalment of the motorsport management sim. Last year’s inaugural title was a hit among fans, letting them step into the role of Team Principal at any of their favourite F1 teams, micromanaging their way to pole position.
This year, Frontier is looking to take its project to the next level, adding all-new layers of gameplay on top of an already dense package. GGRecon spoke with Andrew Fletcher and Lloyd Morgan-Moore, the Game Director and Senior Producer on F1 Manager 2023, to dig deeper into what makes this new title tick.
- Read what we thought of F1 Manager 2023 in our preview.
Building upon strong foundations
Click to enlargeF1 Manager 2023, is in many ways looking to add new depth to the gameplay loop that fans will be familiar with from last year.
Fletcher runs us through the extensive list of new features that fans can expect this year.
“We’re building upon those foundations by bolstering team management with features like pit crew management, car part inspections and durability controls, and new e-mail dilemmas for players to navigate.
“Alongside rebalanced cost cap and car development systems, we want players to experience additional layers of depth and challenge to this side of the game when compared to last year.”
Another huge addition this year is the new Sporting Director role, which lets players deal with the pit crew much more closely. Dictating their training plans will impact how well your pitstops are executed, resulting in either more or fewer errors. As any F1 fan will know, a bad pit stop can make or break a race position.
All of these changes are to give players more options and control in the racing environment. As a result, there should now be far more opportunities to turn the tide in a bad spell.
“The increased focus on pit stops also means we’re now emulating those critical turning points that so often can turn a race on its head, in the form of dramatic pit stop mistakes or undercut-enabling fast stops”, says Fletcher.
- Here's everything you need to know about F1 Manager 2023, including the release date, trailers, and more.
Eat, Sleep, Race, Repeat
Click to enlargePerhaps the most exciting addition to F1 Manager 2023 is the new ‘Race Replay’ mode of play. Here, iconic moments from throughout the 2023 F1 season have been recreated in the game, with players able to jump into the command seat during the peak of these scenarios.
“Race Replay allows you to rewrite races and memorable moments from the 2023 season and explore the many ‘what if’ possibilities of a Grand Prix,” Fletcher explains.
These scenarios take in about as much data as you can possibly get from an F1 car, too. Ambient temperatures, weather changes, tyre allocations and timing gaps between each car have all been painstakingly recreated to give players the most accurate representation possible.
It’s clear that the team at Frontier are fans of F1 just as much as its player base.
“Many of us will take notes on interesting events on-track as we watch the race live, and it’s exciting to be able to compare these options together to figure out which will give the players the best overall experience”, says Fletcher.
He goes on to explain the thought process behind how Race Replay moments are implemented to give players the best experience possible.
"Once we start setting these up, there are often further discussions around the exact moment they should begin at; if there was a key turning point in the race we may choose to place the player into the heart of the action, or we may want to give them a little bit of space before that point to set up their race strategy or take a look at what their opponents are doing and react to it.”
Moments from races that have already happened in the 2023 calendar will be available when the game launches later in July. More Race Replay moments will also be added as post-launch content as the season progresses, although Frontier didn’t comment on whether this content plan will extend into the 2024 season.
Not only is Race Replay a fun addition, but it also makes F1 Manager 2023 more accessible. Not everyone has the time to dig into a full career mode, nor sit through an entire 71-lap race without whacking it on x10 speed and missing important racing decisions.
As such, Race Replay offers a more bite-sized way to interact with the game, providing a gameplay loop that can last 20 minutes rather than hours upon hours.
If you’re set on career mode, however, there’s good news. Mid-race saves will be possible in F1 Manager 2023, as Morgan-Moore explains:
“Players can save the game during a race and come back to it at a later date, picking up exactly where they left off.”
Bright future
Click to enlargeF1 Manager 2023 looks to be delivering on a lot of the feedback that was received from 2022’s installation, like the new ability to swap teams in the middle of the season. This is contextual, too - just like we’ve seen Team Principals like Frederic Vasseur move around this season.
“Based on their performance, Team Principals will be offered the opportunity to take control of a competitor, extending their legacy on the pit wall”, explains Fletcher.
Of course, fans of these games will always have their own ideas for new features to be implemented. For example, we’d personally love to see an improvement in the race viewing experience - missing important racing incidents can be a common occurrence, especially when setting the speed on fast-forward.
Thankfully, it doesn’t sound like the team is short of other new ideas, either.
“There are plenty of avenues that we’ve yet to go down in the series, as well as greater levels of depth and strategy that we’d love to explore”, says Fletcher.
“However, right now our primary focus is on ensuring that F1 Manager 23 delivers a captivating experience that represents the next step on that journey while polishing and refining what came before to provide the best F1 management experience possible.”
Morgan-Moore echoes this, saying, “With how excited the team are about F1 in general there are always interesting ideas to explore and while we will always discuss these together, right now our focus is on F1 Manager 2023.“
So, if the stars align and F1 Manager 2023 manages to be just as successful as its predecessor, we could be chatting about even more racing innovations this time next year.
F1 Manager 2023 is set to launch on PC, PlayStation, and Xbox on July 31, 2023. For more F1 Manager content, keep reading GGRecon.
