I Love Recreating Big Sporting Moments in Games
You can't stop me from writing about F1.
Listen, you all knew a Formula 1 piece was coming in some capacity eventually, and I'm not counting Formula Legends there. I make little secret of being a fan, I follow this more closely than football or rugby, and that's only grown these last few years. We've reached a point where I've sunk 80 hours into F1 Manager 24, and I'm regularly finding new ways to keep this exciting.
My latest campaign attempt is directly inspired by the 2025 British Grand Prix, which might seem like an odd thing to single out if you're unaware of the context. It's one of the more chaotic races we've seen all year thanks to the wet weather conditions, which saw several bouts of rain followed by the track drying up. We couldn't have known how legendary this would soon become, overshadowing Lando Norris taking the first home win of his career.
Silverstone's star of the show was Nico Hülkenberg, the veteran F1 driver who first debuted in 2010. He's an undeniably talented driver, though he's never had the most competitive car and has had a few near misses. And yet, despite qualifying in P19 on a 20-car grid, a combination of some incredible strategy across the rainy conditions, a strong defence and, sure, a bit of luck, he finally took his first podium by finishing 3rd.
You could've believed that Hülkenberg and Kick Sauber had won the race; the celebrations certainly reflected that. For a team that scored only four points in 2024 with no podiums at all since 2012, combined with a man who finally earned that elusive podium in his 239th race, I've never seen such a popular 3rd place finish. Everyone loved that, and rightly so.
Watching all this unfold inspired me to pick up F1 Manager 24 again, having taken a break for several months. Normally, I'd pick the 'Create A Team' option to add an 11th constructor of my own, perhaps altering the line-up in other teams alongside that to replace Lance Stroll with Felipe Drugovich. This time, I chose the standard career mode, and decided that I would take Sauber's success even further.
Now, did I mention Sauber was 2024's worst team? Yeah, turns out that's begging for trouble. I didn't alter the race difficulty settings either, keeping that at 'standard' as I began furiously upgrading the car affectionately nicknamed 'tractor' by many. However, F1 Manager 25 being cancelled means that by selecting an existing team lineup in a normal season, I'm initially stuck with the old driver lineup.
In a move that would even have Red Bull's aggressive management going “steady on,” my second driver, Zhou Guanyu, was gone after the first race. Replacing him to join Valtteri Bottas? Nico Hülkenberg, of course. This isn't another campaign diary like the one I wrote for startmenu, so I'll say initial progress was slow. Still, we scored more than the actual 2024 Sauber team did, taking 7 points overall - 6 of those being Bottas.
Most of my money eventually went towards researching for 2025's car, and I quickly began seeing a breakthrough. We're not winning races immediately, though points finishes are more frequent. Yet in remarkably similar circumstances to this year's real-life British Grand Prix, variable weather and all, suddenly we were in an advantageous position at the in-game Japanese Grand Prix.
With a combination of fresh intermediate tyres, some retirements and fortunate safety car timing near the end after Stroll crashed, suddenly Nico Hülkenberg was in contention. Putting every setting to maximum for tyres, fuel consumption and battery, we went from 7th at the restart to 3rd, falling just slightly short of 2nd. For a driver who only took a single point in the previous season, I couldn't believe it.
A well-earned podium.
My goal was to eventually make Sauber champions, yet before we could even come close to that notion, I'd inadvertently recreated the British Grand Prix results in near identical circumstances. Granted, Verstappen won this time with Norris 2nd, but there's a remarkable joy I found in otherwise emulating this. It's the underdog fantasy that sports games often thrive on, the type of result everyone loves.
It's a considerably different feeling from completing the 'Race Moments' that Frontier had released across F1 Manager 23 and 24, which are mostly based on key moments from the real-life races those years. By design, these are deliberately scripted to either match a particular outcome or allow you to change that destiny. Making these moments happen by chance is a strangely more satisfying thing.
I've spoken at length about Frontier's motorsport management sim across the years, reviewing each main entry as they appeared, and that includes F1 Manager 24 if you want a more detailed rundown. One year since it launched, I'm still entertained by exploring different scenarios to keep this game interesting. If I can make Sauber successful, I'm wondering what I'll attempt next.
Henry Stockdale
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