The Racing Game Thread

[Twist]

First online race on F1 22 the guy next to me on the grid just went hard right and put me straight into the wall. First couple of laps are just survival of the fittest until you can get some clear air and/or race someone actually competent and fair.

[METALMAN]

F1 online looks too scary for me

[JasonM]

Videodump of all the F1 Manager videos, and it's definitely super intriguing.

 

 

[METALMAN]

Is anyone getting this? I won a pub quiz the other night so I caved in and pre-ordered this. I've never pre-ordered a game before but I quite like the idea of having five extra days to play it before my work picks up at the start of September.

[JasonM]

I am intrigued with it, but admittedly will hold out until I see some reviews and other news about the depth of the game itself and its longevity. I want my management sims to be able to go off many many years into the future, so I kind of want to see that in this too.

 

[METALMAN]

Yeah the longevity aspect is my main concern too. It’s a bit of shame that you’ll playing the game and just having the same ten teams year after year. When it comes to things like that having all the licenses can be a curse as well as a blessing. 

[Bobfoc]

I've read that you can't shorten race lengths or even save in the middle of a race, which sounds a bit annoying. Playing through a whole season will take a long time. That will be a good thing for those who like to manage everything in great depth, but I can see it putting a lot of other people off.

Not being able to change teams or create your own is a bit of a baffling omission as well. Presumably, then, if you get sacked, it's game over.

[METALMAN]

I tried my first race and it was good fun. I went Ferrari and got top two places. Turns out Ferrari is pretty easy when you don’t make stupid decisions.

Thinking about backing out this game and trying someone a bit more challenging like McLaren. They start the game with a terrible car - like the start of the real 22 season I guess - but with obvious room for improvement.

[JasonM]

Ok so I found out that there's endless amounts of seasons and the game will generate F3/F2 talent as time goes on. That definitely has me much more interested and i'll be on the lookout to pick it up.

Part of me finds it a bit disappointing there's no 'create a team' option to add a 11th manufacturer onto the grid, but I assume that it's partly because of licensing and a lack of resources during development, I can see it happening in future editions, though.

One neat thing I also saw is that portraits dynamically change the suit depending on what team they drive for, someone I know decided to go crazy and fire Russell/Hamilton from Mercedes and hire Hulkenberg/Sergeant instead, and their portraits were updated. (although unrealistically, there were no teams instantly pouncing on either released talent, but I can see teams hire them at a later point).

Also the presentation looks absolutely top notch, with the ability to check out replays of things happening quite easily and even with a prompt giving you the action to quick switch to an unfolding situation, really cool, and it seems like Frontier went above and beyond on a lot of aspects.

[METALMAN]

Yeah the race presentation is really astounding for a manager game but it really adds to the experience, it’s not just nice visuals for the sake of having nice visuals. I like that aspect. 

I really need to get out of Ferrari. They start out so much better than Red Bull. I got top two in the first two races with about a ten second cushion to Verstappen. A mid table team will be more fun.

I get the gripes around not having a mode to create a team. That would be cool but I can kind of understand why it’s not there. If I could lose the Miami Grand Prix that would be grand too.

So far I think my only major gripe is the lack of mid-race saving. I’m too much of a control freak to go through races at 16x speed but I’m not always going to be able to guarantee I’ve got an hour or so to do one properly either.

I’d also like a bit more depth on media but I know that can easily get quite monotonous like in FM. But at the moment it doesn’t seem to be there at all. At least from what I’ve experienced. But it would be fun to see crazy rumours, drama and that sort of thing.

[Twist]

Aston Martin are an interesting team to use.

Shit car, good money, and you can drop Stroll for very cheap and pop Piastri in his seat (or promote Hulkenberg). No lifetime contract here!

[Bobfoc]

Based on recommendations and having some digital credit left over, I decided to pick this up. I chose to play as Alpine and got sacked.

I decided to put loads of research into the following year's car, which turned out to be a mistake as the board felt a sixth-place finish wasn't good enough. Next time, I'll see how things turn out if I plan more for the short-term future, rather than the next season.

Other lessons learned the hard way included ensuring that there's a healthy stock of components for when Vettel drives into your car and writes it off completely and not simulating practice sessions so that you can get a better setup than the AI would otherwise provide you with.

[METALMAN]

I usually play the first practice and simulate 2 and 3

[Twist]

Decided to do a game with Alpine.

Super consistent 4th to 8th place finishes across the first 8 races.

Got to Baku and Alonso stuck it on pole after a period of rain and I sent them out on slicks while the rest of the grid went out on inters. Ocon started 3rd, got second off the line and backed the whole pack up a treat. It all eventually crumbled and it was a 4th and 5th finish.

Then we hit Canada, decent qualifying and Alonso was leading with 20 laps to go when we got a safety car. No idea what the rest of the pack was going to do so pitted for softs, left everyone but LeClerc behind but couldn’t break the DRS. Eventually the tires fell away and Max caught Fernando on the last corner.

Then we hit Silverstone. And Alonso won. That’s it, drama free. One stopped against most others two, 12 second victory. Ocon in 3rd. Double podium.

And Alonso followed that up with ANOTHER win in Austria. Ocon 4th.

The car is ranked 3rd on the grid now, I’ve managed to do some development for next year, more in year upgrades on the way. We’re marooned in 3rd in the constructors, 150+ points ahead of Mercedes but 80 odd behind Red Bull and 100+ behind Ferrari.

Red Bull and Ferrari dominated prior to Canada, sharing every podium with LeClerc winning the first 5 races (and still has a big lead in the standings).

I suspect RB and Ferrari will pull away again. Although we do have more development hours, so another couple of good results and I might go all in on this season if Alonso seems like he’s in the hunt.

Should be a great second half of the season though.

I love this game.

[Chris2K]

I think I'm going to have to wait until it comes down in price before I can justify getting it, mainly because of financial and lack of time reasons, I've been watching some streams over the weekend and it seems to take a while to do each race weekend.

[Bobfoc]

3 hours ago, Chris2K said:

I think I'm going to have to wait until it comes down in price before I can justify getting it, mainly because of financial and lack of time reasons, I've been watching some streams over the weekend and it seems to take a while to do each race weekend.

You can accelerate the sessions by up to 16x speed, which can help save a lot of time.

[METALMAN]

9 hours ago, Bobfoc said:

You can accelerate the sessions by up to 16x speed, which can help save a lot of time.

I tried a 16x speed sim for a few races and got nothing in the way of incidents/safety cars. I've not that many to actually know this for sure but I'm wondering if you need to do it at normal speed for these things to happen? There was much more action in the races I did in real time.

I really like this game too but I wonder if the AI could use some work. I got Lando Norris a win at Imola in his orange tractor and Danny Ricciardo was fifth. This is because there was a safety car two laps before the pit window and I decided to just go onto hards a bit early and go easy on them for the rest of the race. As soon as the safety car was over and the cars were bunched up - and they had reached the pit window - all the top cars went in to pit and found themselves right at the back of the pack. In the end I won by about fifteen seconds. 

[Bobfoc]

You can definitely still have incidents and safety cars at 16x speed. I don't know if they're any less common or not.

Something I've noticed is that the different tyre compounds don't have much difference in terms of track speed. Unless you get a safety car, there's no reason to go with a two-stop strategy if a one-stop is possible. I hope that will be addressed in a patch.

I also notice that nobody retires as a result of mechanical failures. You might slow down if your engine, gearbox or ERS is damaged, but you never have to retire unless there's a crash. I think it would be more interesting if things like engine failures and punctures were possible.

More off-track events would be nice too. The regular F1 games have so-called "dilemmas" that can come up that can let you make decisions that affect car part development and driver and staff morale. Interaction with your team members is surprisingly lacking.

[METALMAN]

I think I had a retirement from a mechanical failure. Or at least I had a retirement that didn’t have the highlight pop up telling me there was a crash so I kind of assumed it was a mechanical failure…

And yeah I’d like them to bring through the personality side of it a lot more. There doesn’t seem to be any form of relationships between drivers or competition between teammates. It seems to be the case that every time I ask one driver to get out the way for a teammate he is only too happy to do so. That could do with a whole lot more depth.

Don’t get me wrong, for the first in a series this is a really good effort and it has definitely surpassed my expectations, but there are plenty of areas that could be developed further.

[Twist]

They need to allow lapped cars to unload during a safety car restart. Causes chaos at the moment.