Race Time
After you have had your hands held through the first race. The hands held so much that you are even forced to skip all free practice sessions, and thus you never get any guiding on how to do those the "right" way, again, we aren't going deep with things. It is time for race 2, and finally you have freedom to do what you want. It's time to do some free practice sessions and fix the setup of the cars.
Talk about being inspired by Motorsport Manager. To nail the setup it works in pretty much the exact same way, here you have five sliders you can adjust, which changes the five setup parameters in different ways. Then you need you driver to go on the track and drive so the bars of possible setup shrinks. It's just like Motorsport Manager, except, it's a lot more tedious. The drivers both need to do many laps to be able to give feedback on all 5 setup parameters. You can pit them when they are ready to give feedback on two out of 5, but then you go in quite blind. How many laps the drivers need depends on their race engineer, who's one of the skills are feedback. The better skill, the faster setup points are gained. Now, I've played as Williams, and I need 15 to 18 laps to get this done, basically half a free practice. During Free Practice your drivers also gain knowledge of the car parts, the higher knowledge gives better performance and they also have track acclimitisation. The problem is, even with constant driving in all three free practices, just interrupted by setup changes. They might not get 100% on the track knowledge. It's also all forgotten for the next year.
You may also use your reserve driver in FP1. If your reserve is a huge talent, this is the only way to boost the development. This does mean that the driver being replaced will not get 100% track knowledge, and will suffer compared to a driver who does it all. A reserve may not be replacing a race driver at any point during the season though, so it is more like a "talent seat" than reserve.
Setups inspired by Motorsport Manager.
Qualifying is way more straight forward, Q1, 2 and 3. We all know how that works, and there's nothing special to write about there, except you need to do your best to avoid traffic. This cannot be done while the car are on the track. There's no "keep distance" or "make a gap" order, so it must be timed right when you let the car out to the track. Do note that the sector times doesn't actually show any relative time, just their current splits, which is a shame.
The race is the main thing, both in real life and in any game. Before starting the session you need to setup a strategy, there are always three presets available, and you can create your own. You may also just choose a starting tyre and not do any strategies. The advantage of doing a strategy, is that you can choose how hard a driver will push on the different stints, and see the tyre life out from that, making it possible to plan pretty good. One issue is that drivers have different skills, some have high "smoothness" which means they can make the tyres last longer. However this doesn't show up on the strategy screen, even after doing three FP's and qualifyings, somehow the strategies are based solely on the predefined tyre life, not affected by the drivers abilities and the knownledge the team should have after three hours of practice. This makes the practice sessions even more tedious, as you spend a lot of time just for a setup bit and track knowedge, which both starts at 0 at every race and in every season. If you simulate practice sessions, you will never get a great or perfect setup. So you should do them to get maximum performance.
Anyway, after choosing a strategy and starting fuel, you can also change car parts to equal specification. You can put in a fresh engine for the race, maybe revert to an older gearbox etc. Though, there are no reason to revert to anything, as there's no development on engines, mapping or anything. When all is set and done, it's time for the race. Again Croft does his little bit, and you get to see the light turn red with their beep, before "it's lights out and away we go". Except Spa, where the lights stays on during the whole race.
The race session is in reality an ERS management session. While your orders to the drivers in terms of tyre usage and fuel usage do affect the speed and how long the tyres last, it is the ERS that is the key. That's what you use to get that extra boost to get close enough to make a pass, and what you use to pull away so the driver you just passed doesn't get DRS. Then it is time to recharge a bit, but not so much that the one you just passed gets within the DRS. You have full overview of all drivers, telemetry, laptimes and so on. You can check the forecast, the predicted tyrewear, fuel usage and everything you would ever need, and then some. Everthing is hidden in submenus, some more intuitive and easier than others, but they tend to get on top of other HUD elements. Even if you chose a strategy, you don't have to follow that, and can change it on the fly. Especially if it rains.
F1 Manager 2022 features Virtual Safety Car, Safety Car and also Red Flags. Together with rain and accidents not triggering anything, you need to be on your toes, and ready to react, check on expected tyre wear, see where you are predicted to get back out on to the track and what decision to take.
All sessions can have a speed from 1x to 16x. In 1x and 2x you can watch the broadcast of the race, from 4x to 16x you are forced to watch the map and the cars 2d dots. Regardless of speed, you have prompts that you can click on to see replays of incidents that have happened during the race and if chosen in the settings, the game will go back to normal speed if something major happens that affects one or both of your cars.
When the race ends, Croft and Karun Chandhok does their bit, and it's time to see the race results and standings. You can also jump to the data viewer and see all the tyre choices, reports and information for the race if you want.
Double stacking is possible, here in Singapore en route to Oscar Piastri finishing 10th and taking his first F1 points.
Talk about being inspired by Motorsport Manager. To nail the setup it works in pretty much the exact same way, here you have five sliders you can adjust, which changes the five setup parameters in different ways. Then you need you driver to go on the track and drive so the bars of possible setup shrinks. It's just like Motorsport Manager, except, it's a lot more tedious. The drivers both need to do many laps to be able to give feedback on all 5 setup parameters. You can pit them when they are ready to give feedback on two out of 5, but then you go in quite blind. How many laps the drivers need depends on their race engineer, who's one of the skills are feedback. The better skill, the faster setup points are gained. Now, I've played as Williams, and I need 15 to 18 laps to get this done, basically half a free practice. During Free Practice your drivers also gain knowledge of the car parts, the higher knowledge gives better performance and they also have track acclimitisation. The problem is, even with constant driving in all three free practices, just interrupted by setup changes. They might not get 100% on the track knowledge. It's also all forgotten for the next year.
You may also use your reserve driver in FP1. If your reserve is a huge talent, this is the only way to boost the development. This does mean that the driver being replaced will not get 100% track knowledge, and will suffer compared to a driver who does it all. A reserve may not be replacing a race driver at any point during the season though, so it is more like a "talent seat" than reserve.
Setups inspired by Motorsport Manager.
Qualifying is way more straight forward, Q1, 2 and 3. We all know how that works, and there's nothing special to write about there, except you need to do your best to avoid traffic. This cannot be done while the car are on the track. There's no "keep distance" or "make a gap" order, so it must be timed right when you let the car out to the track. Do note that the sector times doesn't actually show any relative time, just their current splits, which is a shame.
The race is the main thing, both in real life and in any game. Before starting the session you need to setup a strategy, there are always three presets available, and you can create your own. You may also just choose a starting tyre and not do any strategies. The advantage of doing a strategy, is that you can choose how hard a driver will push on the different stints, and see the tyre life out from that, making it possible to plan pretty good. One issue is that drivers have different skills, some have high "smoothness" which means they can make the tyres last longer. However this doesn't show up on the strategy screen, even after doing three FP's and qualifyings, somehow the strategies are based solely on the predefined tyre life, not affected by the drivers abilities and the knownledge the team should have after three hours of practice. This makes the practice sessions even more tedious, as you spend a lot of time just for a setup bit and track knowedge, which both starts at 0 at every race and in every season. If you simulate practice sessions, you will never get a great or perfect setup. So you should do them to get maximum performance.
Anyway, after choosing a strategy and starting fuel, you can also change car parts to equal specification. You can put in a fresh engine for the race, maybe revert to an older gearbox etc. Though, there are no reason to revert to anything, as there's no development on engines, mapping or anything. When all is set and done, it's time for the race. Again Croft does his little bit, and you get to see the light turn red with their beep, before "it's lights out and away we go". Except Spa, where the lights stays on during the whole race.
The race session is in reality an ERS management session. While your orders to the drivers in terms of tyre usage and fuel usage do affect the speed and how long the tyres last, it is the ERS that is the key. That's what you use to get that extra boost to get close enough to make a pass, and what you use to pull away so the driver you just passed doesn't get DRS. Then it is time to recharge a bit, but not so much that the one you just passed gets within the DRS. You have full overview of all drivers, telemetry, laptimes and so on. You can check the forecast, the predicted tyrewear, fuel usage and everything you would ever need, and then some. Everthing is hidden in submenus, some more intuitive and easier than others, but they tend to get on top of other HUD elements. Even if you chose a strategy, you don't have to follow that, and can change it on the fly. Especially if it rains.
F1 Manager 2022 features Virtual Safety Car, Safety Car and also Red Flags. Together with rain and accidents not triggering anything, you need to be on your toes, and ready to react, check on expected tyre wear, see where you are predicted to get back out on to the track and what decision to take.
All sessions can have a speed from 1x to 16x. In 1x and 2x you can watch the broadcast of the race, from 4x to 16x you are forced to watch the map and the cars 2d dots. Regardless of speed, you have prompts that you can click on to see replays of incidents that have happened during the race and if chosen in the settings, the game will go back to normal speed if something major happens that affects one or both of your cars.
When the race ends, Croft and Karun Chandhok does their bit, and it's time to see the race results and standings. You can also jump to the data viewer and see all the tyre choices, reports and information for the race if you want.
Double stacking is possible, here in Singapore en route to Oscar Piastri finishing 10th and taking his first F1 points.
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