F1 Manager 2022 is free to play on Steam right now

F1 Manager 2022 is free to play on Steam this weekend. From now until March 6th for nowt, you can try Frontier’s driving management simulation, with a 70% discount if you decide to buy it.

The free weekend has been timed to coincide with the start of the 2023 F1 season this weekend. And with the release of the new season of Drive To Survive on Netflix, which let’s face it is what more people care about these days.

F1 Manager 2022 puts you not into the helmet of an F1 driver – you’ll want F1 2022 for that. Instead, it casts you as the boss of a team, able to pick drivers and staff, define engineering efforts, and select pit strategies during races. It’s Football Manager but for F1, in other words, and the first of a four-game licensing deal between Formula 1 and Elite Dangerous developers Frontier.

That series is presumably destined to be yearly, although Frontier ran into a community backlash in October last year when they announced a coming update to F1M22 would be the last “that addresses player-reported feedback, or suggested changes and additions.” They walked the comment back quickly, blaming “crossed wires”, and said that more updates were in development which would address “the most important topics raised by the community.”

While F1 Manager 2022 is the first in the series by Frontier, there was an older F1 Manager game by EA back in 2000. There’s also the unofficial Motorsport Manager from 2016, which Alec liked a lot.

You’ve got four days or so to decide if F1 Manager 2022 is for you. At 70% off on Steam, it’ll cost you £13.49/$16.49 to buy it.