Do you want to try running a race team? Motorsport Manager offers a very detailed management game of a racing team. Hire the best drivers, upgrade your car, and feel yourself at the top of car racing management.
This game also has a lite or mobile version, called Motorsport Manager Online.
This review is NOT sponsored by the Playsport Games.
Summary
Price: approximately $13 to $27 USD (including DLCs)
Genre: Sport, Racing management
Total File Size: ~16 GB
Platform: PC game (Windows/macOS/Linux).
Download:
» Steam, Reviews: 91% Positive.
Pros:
+ Rich game experiences
+ Short learning curve
+ Lots of available MODs (on Steam)
Cons:
– Low replayability
– Program frequently crashed
Gameplay
When creating a new career, you can choose one of 7 championship options, categorized into Formula, GT, or Endurance series. Then you can choose to run an existing team or create a new one for your career.
When playing the game for the first time, activating the tutorial is recommended. So, you will be helped to familiarize yourself with the game mechanics and start playing your career.
Otherwise, you can choose single race or challenge section to focus on winning a specific race event.
Team management
There are many things you have to manage in a new career, such as cars, headquarters, sponsors, drivers, and staff. Basically, you need to improve your car and hire good drivers, to win the next race events.
However, improving cars depends on several things, such as money, headquarters level, and staff. In addition, hiring excellent drivers requires a lot of money to pay their salary and bonuses. With a lot of interconnected things, your skills in managing a team will play a big role.
Race event
You can go to the race schedule (Calendar) to see the next race events. It has useful information about weather, laps, tire options, and crucial parts of your car. It is advisable to prepare your team for the next events.
Typically, there are 3 sessions in a racing event: Practice, Qualification, and Race. In this game, you may spend about 20 to 60 minutes on a full race, excluding load and restart.
In Practice session, you have to fine-tune your car set-up according to the driver’s feedback. Your car set-up is near its optimal balance if your driver gives excellent feedback. If you get all the excellent feedback in Downforce, Handling, and Speed Balance, typically, it is around 98-100% of the optimal balance of that car.
Other than that, drivers may obtain “knowledge” bonuses for race trim, qualification trim, and specific tires. It has a 5% to 30% performance increase and is very useful to improve your chance of winning.
In the Qualification session, the aim is to set the best lap. The developers offer a mini-game on the Brake and Tyre temperature before running the next lap. You have a lap to prepare the temperature by adjusting the clear air optimization. Although you can skip it by turning on the Auto button, it may not get a perfect temperature.
In addition, you still have time to fine-tune your car set-up during qualifying to get the optimal balance near 100%.
In Race session, you can continuously change the strategy, such as driving style and engine mode. This will affect car speed, tire wear, fuel burn, and car condition.
When you plan to call a car to a pit stop, you can plan to change the tire, add/remove fuel, and fix car parts. In addition, you can set the pit strategy to choose the trade between speed and error risks.
Pros
Rich game experiences
As described above, Motorsport Manager offers deep management of a racing team with satisfying graphics. You will manage your cars, headquarters, sponsors, drivers, and staff, depending on your budget.
Other than managing the top level, you can opt to micro-managing the racing event by playing many mini-games to increase the winning chance.
Compared to other racing management games, it has higher level of freedom and range of possibilities. In addition, this PC version of Motorsport Manager has more complex game mechanics than the mobile version.
Short learning curve
Gameplay mechanics are easy to understand, especially if you are familiar with the online mobile version. You may need short time to know the game.
Lots of available MODs
Motorsport Manager has a solid community on Steam. Numerous available MODs give you more possibilities to improve the database, 3D models, and UI graphics of the game.
Cons
Low replayability
In the first season, you start playing the game, knowing the game mechanic. However, after about the 3rd to 5th season (after ~50–100 hours of play) you may feel that you do repetitive things. It is simply a grind to increase your money and improve your car and team performance, then race again.
Although it has 7 championship options for a New Career, it has slightly different racing rules. In addition, the Challenges game may give you a different target to achieve, but that’s it, nothing more.
In my opinion, Motorsport Manager is a great game with enjoyable mechanics. However, it has low replayability, even in both Mobile and PC versions. It is possible that you may get bored after ~50–100 hours of play.
Program frequently crashed
A laptop may run out of RAM and the program crashes, and it may be acceptable. However, even using a powerful PC (higher than the recommended system requirements) and 64GB RAM, the game often crashed for unknown reasons.
