The original Motorsport Manager walked so F1 Manager could run, and now Playsport has re-acquired the rights to it. To be an F1 fan is to spend your Sunday afternoons tutting and muttering to disinterested loved ones about how you would have managed the undercut better.
Playsport Games understands this better than anyone, that it’s just as engrossing to be on the pitwall as in the cockpit. They proved this with 2016’s magnificent Motorsport Manager.
A full decade on, the announcement of Motorsport Manager 2 is a big deal. We haven’t been starved, exactly, for virtual team principal work in the interim.
Frontier’s fantastic F1 Manager games let us scratch many of the same itches, from choosing tire strategies to allocating wind tunnel time and negotiating driver contracts. They filled the gap, but Motorsport Manager 2 is a significant development.
The sequel is designed as an evolution of the series, not a reinvention. The core fantasy remains clear: build the team, improve the machinery, hire the right people, and go racing. It expands that foundation with more depth, more freedom, and a more reactive motorsport world.
Motorsport Manager 2 includes GT, endurance and single-seater categories, with more to come. There’ll be mod support from day one – a very big feature, given how passionately the community’s supported the first game – and the game promises more tactical action on race days, and more customisation and ‘what if’ scenario creation in the options.
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A major focus for Motorsport Manager 2 is delivering a more dynamic and believable race experience. Teams will react more intelligently to what is happening on track, adjusting strategy in response to changing conditions, pit stops, rivals, and opportunities. A new weather simulation introduces more varied and dramatic race-day decision-making, with conditions that can change across different parts of the circuit.
Off-track, the absence of licenses means players are free to make their own teams, drivers, and championship categories. That’s the bit Playsport is particularly focusing on. Our best experiences with 2016’s Motorsport Manager were tied to that unlicensed, player-led storytelling.
The relationships formed with utterly fictional drivers were a key part of the experience. The gradual, diligent progress of our fictional minnow team through the categories was also engaging.
So it sounds like Playsport is leaning into the real strengths of the series. We absolutely can’t wait to hear more. One thing to note is that Motorsport Manager 2 is due in 2027, and the Steam store page is already up, where you can find all the info that’s currently been revealed.
In the middle of all this excitement, it’s worth taking a step back to consider what Motorsport Manager 2 could mean for the future of racing games – with the return of a beloved series, and the potential for new innovations, the possibilities are endless.
For now, fans of the series can rest easy knowing that Playsport is hard at work on the next installment, and that it’s shaping up to be something special.
