F1 Manager 2024 just added a preposterous amount of new content for free

As a new season of Formula One approaches, Frontier Developments have decided to mark the occasion with an absolutely enormous update to F1 Manager 2024. It’s beyond generous.

Update 1.11 massively expands the game’s customisation options, allowing you to swap drivers between teams freely before starting a game, create new drivers and staff from scratch, tinker with the rules and regs, the race calendar, and more.

On top of that, two new livery packs add 12 designs to the game, gratis. The ‘Historical Livery Pack’ and ‘Abstract Livery Pack’ add six designs which reference classic cars from seasons past, and six designs not rooted in real liveries.

You can read the full details of what’s included in the 1.11 update and its myriad customisation options via the game’s official blog.

Highlights – to our eye at least – are the ability to add custom drivers, opening the door to recreating historical grids from bygone eras, and starting conditions customisation which lets you fiddle with which teams have which level of infrastructure. Again, that lets you go for a historical-themed playthrough if you like, restoring once-great teams like Williams to their former glory and shuffling relative newcomers back a few steps.

There’s also full race calendar customisation, and multiple options for how the calendar changes between seasons, including a 30 per cent circuit change and full randomisation from one season to the next.

If this is all sounding suspiciously wonderful, it should be noted that there’s speculation over the series’ future. F1 Manager 2025 has not been announced, and developer Frontier’s FY24 financial results mentions the termination of an unspecified licensing contract for future games.

“After 31 May 2024 and before the signing of the accounts on 10 September 2024, commercial discussions with an IP partner resulted in the voluntary termination of a contract for a future game before full development started," it said in a statement.

That doesn’t directly state that there’ll be no F1 Manager 2025, of course. But Traxion reports that financial services group Zeus Capital has confirmed the statement relates to the F1 Manager series.

Against that backdrop, this suite of extremely welcome new content for the 2024 game looks a touch more bittersweet.

All we can say is if there’s a hypothetical future in which F1 Manager 2024 finds a way to live on through paid updates in a live service model, we’re on board. For now, let’s just enjoy new ways to play it.