Once you head to the track it gets even better. The game could honestly stand alone with just the swish looking interface and interesting new take on management gameplay mechanics, but no. And if you ever get lost, there’s always the mustachio’d adviser in blue overalls going by the name ‘Nigel’ to help you out at the tap of a finger. The game menus manage to pack in a wealth of information on each screen without ever feeling cluttered, and that’s a difficult thing to do with only 4 inches available (I’m playing this on an iPhone 5S). The game has its own Twitter-like feed where you’ll hear from your fans, rivals, sponsors, journalists and even your haters, which really brings the experience alive and offers an interesting way to gauge how your team is doing rather than the usual spiel of experience points and spreadsheets. As well as the obvious need to hire two of the best drivers without having them squabble over number one status (and they will), there’s the small matter of car development itself in the 3 areas of aero, design and manufacturing (along with heads of each department), staff management to deal with, sponsorship deals to clinch and even a young driver programme to kick into motion once you’ve built enough of a reputation.Īlongside the basics of running the team itself, developer Christian West has added another important aspect of the modern motorsport world – social media. Once you’ve named your new champions-to-be and chosen your racing colours and logo, its time to get down to work!Īll the important aspects of running a modern day F1 team are available here. The UI design is slick, crisp and clear, presented with all the motorsport branding cliches of carbon greys, the red and whites of curbs and visual elements such as chevrons to make you feel instantly at home in your new pocket sized cut-throat world at the helm of your own F1 team. You can instantly tell a lot of time, effort and expertise has been pumped into this app as the intro and loading screens fade in. There’s been a smattering of awful shovelware attempts on PC, as well as the odd online browser-based game, but not for almost two decades have you been able to kick back on your own and become the next Frank Williams or Ron Dennis.Įnter Motorsport Manager, a new take on the racing team management sim genre released this week for Apple iOS devices. Grand Prix World got drunk off its own ambition, EA’s F1 Manager was more style over substance, and Codemasters own F1 Online: The Game wasn’t sure what it wanted to be. There have been games since that have tried to fill the void.

It’s been 18 years since the release of Grand Prix Manager 2, the last F1 management sim worth phoning home about.