Car Development & Research Guide

A team is only as good as its car.

In F1® Manager 2024 you are responsible for leading a Formula 1® team to victory. Juggling finances, staffing, resources and managing strategy are all in a day’s work, but at the core of every F1® team is the machine itself. It’s essential that you successfully manage the development and design iteration of your car if you want to find long term success and compete for pole position on race day.

This guide will give you an overview of how car development and research work in F1® Manager 2024, along with some useful strategies and tips to set you on the road to victory.

What is Car Development?

All teams in F1® are constantly developing their cars to take advantage of the latest improvements and research in the field. Each F1® car is made up of 9 different parts:

• 6 aerodynamic car parts – designed and manufactured by your in-house engineering team.
• 3 powertrain car parts – built by a manufacturer and chosen at the start of the season.

To stay competitive, you’ll need to upgrade your car by undertaking development projects to design, research, manufacture and install new aerodynamic car parts throughout the seasons.

Design and research projects can be undertaken to fill in gaps that you’ve identified, whether that’s in cornering, acceleration or any other attribute. Once a part has been designed, these can then be ordered for manufacturing and added to your car when ready.

All car development projects take time and cost money to complete. It’s up to you to strike the balance between a cutting-edge car, without eating too much into your cost cap for the season, and delivering parts at the right moment to make the difference. 

Car Performance Attributes and Stats

Research and development projects will look to strengthen a car’s performance by improving its core attributes. Cars in F1® Manager 2024 have 12 attributes which determine how they perform and handle on the track:

• Low Speed Downforce
• Medium Speed Downforce
• High Speed Downforce
• Drag Reduction
• DRS Delta
• Engine Cooling
• Tyre Preservation
• Airflow Sensitivity
• Airflow Front
• Airflow Middle
• Minimum Lifespan
• Power (engine)

These attributes in turn directly feed into a car’s 10 performance stats:

• Top Speed
• Acceleration
• DRS Effectiveness
• Low Speed Cornering
• Medium Speed Cornering
• High Speed Cornering
• Dirty Air Tolerance
• Tyre Preservation
• Engine Cooling
• Total Extra Weight

Different performance stats are more important on different tracks. Keep an eye on which stats are recommend for upcoming circuits when choosing car parts to improve or install.

Identify how your cars are performing for each of these stats by using the Car Analysis view to compare any car on the grid to another, or even compare a car against the average of all cars on the grid. Car Analysis can also be used to compare the attributes of specific car parts, allowing for a more granular comparison of where a car is under or overperforming.

Improving Aerodynamic Car Parts

Aerodynamic car parts play a key role in the way an F1® car behaves on the track. In F1® Manager 2024, the following aerodynamic parts can be researched, designed and manufactured:

• Chassis
• Front Wing
• Rear Wing
• Sidepods
• Underfloor
• Suspension

To start a design project, you must move through 3 steps to set the testing, attribute focus and development settings for the design.

1. Testing & Overview

The first step is allocating aerodynamic testing time to optimise your car part’s attributes. Testing your design using Computational Field Dynamics (CFD) and the wind tunnel allows your engineers to refine their improvements, while also improving their expertise around that specific part enabling them to make even better improvements in the future.

Testing of aerodynamic parts is completed in blocks known as Aerodynamic Testing Restrictions (ATR) periods. This sets a limit on the total number of hours of testing which can be completed by each team, based on their final position in the last Constructors’ Championship. The higher the team placed in standings, the less ATR hours they will have available the next season. 

These regulations are in place to limit dominance from a single team and allow other teams to close the gap where possible.

Testing requires allocating your Mega Allocation Unit hours (MAUh) and wind tunnel hours, both of which have a limit set by the current ATR period.

Investing more of your testing time will result in a better part, but overly focusing your limited testing time on a single car part may result in underperformance elsewhere.

2. Attribute Focus

Once you’ve set your testing hours you can move on to choose a design focus which aims to tweak the part’s individual attributes. Adjusting each of these attributes will impact related attributes and the impact the part will have on performance stats. For example, if you want to improve acceleration, invest in aerodynamic parts that upgrade airflow and drag reduction.

A key attribute is the minimum lifespan and durability of the part, which will affect how long the part is expected to last before it needs to be replaced. Typically, a part with a lower lifespan will be higher performing but will require more frequent replacement.

Striking the balance between which of these attributes you increase or decrease is critical to making sure that your new part has the desired effect on race day. To help you judge this, when changing your attributes you can directly see the impact they have on performance stats. You can also use the Rank on Grid view to see the direct projected impact this would have measured against the other cars on the grid.

3. Development Settings

The final step in creating a design project is choosing your development settings. This allows you to set how many engineers you want to work on the project, along with the approach you want them to take.

Design projects can be approached in 3 ways:

• Normal – your engineers will finish the project as soon as they can without rushing.
• Rushed – your engineers will put in extra hours to finish the project. That will mean a higher cost for a faster completion time.
• Intense – your engineers will put in extra hours to optimise this design. The cost will be higher, but you will gain a greater car part expertise bonus which will improve future designs of this car part.

When you choose the number of engineers and the approach, you’ll be provided with a completion date and cost for the design project, along with how that impacts your current cash and cost cap levels.

Manufacturing Aerodynamic Parts

Once a part has been designed you can then manufacture and add it to your inventory of available parts – this includes any previously designed parts you may have.

Manufacturing a part requires choosing the number of parts you want and then setting an approach, much like the design process.

Manufacturing has 3 available approaches:

• Normal – your engineers will finish the project as soon as they can without rushing.
• Rushed – your engineers will put in extra hours to finish the project. That will mean a higher cost for a faster completion time.
• Emergency – the car parts will arrive today, but at a drastically increased cost.

Once your choices are made, you’ll be provided with a completion date and estimated cost.

Research Projects

In addition to designing and manufacturing parts, you can also complete research projects in preparation for next year’s season. These projects will enable your engineers to refine their expertise with particular car parts and make general improvements to their attributes.

Research projects follow much the same process as a design project, with testing, attribute focus and development settings to choose from. An approach cannot be set for a research project, with your choice instead limited to the number of engineers working on the project.

With a long lead time and limited immediate impact, research projects may seem less enticing than design projects, but they can have a significant impact in your performance in future seasons.

Once any regulation changes have been announced, it’s recommended that you begin to set research projects to address your cars shortcomings and prepare for the changed landscape of the next season.

Regulation changes for the next season will also result in your engineers' losing expertise and understanding of individual parts as the rules relating to them change. Once regulations have been voted on, you can see the impact this will have on your engineer’s understanding of specific parts in the Regulations Overview screen. Offsetting this loss by investing in more research is recommended unless you want to lose the valuable expertise your team has gained so far.

Powertrains

All teams use powertrains from one of four manufacturers:

• Ferrari – a balanced powertrain built through decades of development, effective in any scenario.
• Renault – a harmony between combustion and energy recovery, built for fuel efficiency and bursts of speed.
• Honda RBPT – built with a focus on raw power output above all else.
• Mercedes – designed to resist the wear of racing as much as possible.

Alpine, Red Bull, Ferrari, and Mercedes develop their own powertrains and cannot change manufacturer. For other teams, including your very own custom team, you can choose to change your powertrain manufacturer each season – custom teams with the Your Story background can also choose their powertrain when first creating their team.

There is no best powertrain in F1® Manager 2024, with each powertrain offering different advantages and disadvantages. These advantages and disadvantages can be further enhanced or undercut by changes and improvements to aerodynamic car parts, driver skill, race day wear and your management as Team Principal. The powertrain is only the starting point, what you do with it is in your hands.

Maintaining Your Powertrain

The powertrain is made up of three car parts, the engine, the ERS, and the gearbox, each with their own attributes. Unlike aerodynamic car parts, teams cannot upgrade these parts and must only maintain and replace them. Powertrain car parts will decrease in condition while on the track, which leads to reduced performance and can result in mechanical failure. If a mechanical failure occurs, the team may even be forced to retire from the race session.

Each season teams are limited on number of powertrain car parts each of their cars can use. If the limit is exceeded, the car will receive a grid penalty for the next race. To stay within the car part limits and avoid any mechanical failures, the team will need to strategically cycle car parts throughout the season.

Setting a Design & Research Strategy

There is no one size fits all strategy for how you approach design and research in F1® Manager 2024, and you’ll need to shape your strategy to suit the specific requirements of your car and the ongoing results of the season. However, there are some useful general tips that can help identify and address problems.

Compare to Competitors

The performance of your car doesn’t exist in a vacuum and measuring yourself up to the other cars on the grid is an essential first step when planning which stats you want to upgrade.

Using car analysis to compare against any other car on the grid and switching to the Rank on Grid view when setting up a design project will both enable you to more easily identify where best to invest your money and time.

Plan for the Future

When starting a design project, you can see what stats will be important in upcoming races. You can also see the same stats for every track in the season within the Circuits menu.

Planning around these focus stats is likely to offer you the best return on your investment, so before starting a project take a look at how your car is performing against the rest of the grid for these stats.

Keep in mind that completing a design project and then manufacturing a part will take time. Correctly timing the projects and installing them in your car with enough time to make the difference will be critical, so keep an eye on the completion dates of your projects.

Focus on Individual Attributes

While it might be tempting to try and push your car to be best in class for all performance stats, it’s important to keep in mind your current grid placements and remembering that your opponents will also be developing and refining their cars.

Focusing your development time on significant individual attribute improvements may yield better results on the track, rather than more modest general increases in stats.

For example, if you’re consistently falling behind the pack in raw power, significantly investing in upgrades to acceleration and top speed will have a much larger impact than a broad increase in all of your stats.

Be Flexible

With all cars on the grid also going through their own development and research processes, the outlook is likely to change as the season goes on. Staying flexible in your strategy and adjusting to the latest data will yield better results than strictly sticking to the priorities you had at the start of the season.

When designing parts, it may be tempting to invest a large amount of money in a single project and then manufacturer enough parts to last the whole season. However, this could result in you spending a hefty part of your cost cap and being stuck with a large stockpile of underperforming parts.

Planning for the iterative nature of car development is likely to give you better results, so consider manufacturing small batches of parts at a time. When designing your parts you may also want to consider producing less durable, high-performance parts with the assumption that you’ll be replacing them with new designs anyway.

F1® Manager 2024 is Available Now!

Successfully developing a championship winning F1® car is no mean feat, especially while also navigating the world of sponsorships, contract negotiations and race strategies, but with care and attention you can create a car which will make history.

We hope this guide has given you the introduction you need to create your own car development strategy and carve a path to victory.