I've seen some youtube plays with this game and then looked through Steam reviews, most of which are favourable, so I decided to give it a go. Now, I've just played for 2 hours, but I want to leave this review that I would have liked to see before seeing this game.

First of all, the gameplay seems very shallow, to a point that it's more of a Zero Player Game rather than a Team Manager one. There is no team management during the season - you just select 2 drivers, an engineer and a pit crew chief and that's it for the rest of the season (unless a driver dies in a car crash, in which case you are required to select a replacement). I haven't played much yet I admit, but there seem to be no progression for any of them. You can't even see their age during the season, there is only an ambiguous "Early Carreer/Mid Career" tag at the point of selecting team members, but you can't even see that afterwards. So, every team member has 2 stats (1 to 10 points each) and a number of traits. Also you cannot see any info on anyone outside your team after you select it - there are just names in the standings. Can't even check engineers and pit crew chiefs of other teams.
Money system is very generic by the way, measuring in single dollars, and you cannot understand whether any money sum is not much or is a lot until you play through the season.

Over the course of the race weekend firstly you have a qualifying session, which acts as a practice/tuning session at the same time. You are to "tune" the car in three aspects (Engine, Chassis and Steering) by applying available engineer points in a semi-randomized manner after each run, until you hit +80 performance points in that aspect in which case you achieve "the golden tune" that gives some bonus points, and that aspect performance is then fixed till the end of the weekend. Lap time progression over the course of qualifying seems rather random and unrealistic - everyone gains as much as 6-7 seconds of lap time between the start and the end of the session, and the most influential factor I've seen across any measurable parameters is the "Quali Master" trait, which practically makes that driver perform as Max Verstappen in every qualifying.

In the race you select the tyres (3 dry weather types, Intermediates and Wets), toggle one of three engine modes and one of three driving style approaches (cautious/normal/attacking). Engine mode influences the fuel burn per lap, driving style impacts tyre wear. Tyres do not survive the full course of the race, so you must have at least one pit stop to swap them. And that is it in terms of managing the race.

Now, there are numerous quirks and issues with game mechanics, which give the overall feeling of a rushed out and not really thought through game, much more suited for Early Access rather than a release (and it's been more than half a year since the release). Starting from game flow control, where you do not have any options to save the game mid-session (saves on exit only between weekends), game speed modifier resets to x1 each time there is something happening and stays there afterwards, cannot do any tweaks to engine mode/driving style on restarts after yellow/red flag (you have to pause on restart and then change the controls, otherwise those are locked to the same setting they were before the flag).

Simulation is quite questionable here. You might get a rainy Monaco race going without any incidents and all 20 finishers, though the most common race outcome would be 1-2 crashes per race with yellow or red flags. No pile-ups and multiple car clashing at all (I'm not sure this is even simulated in the game in any way), and I'm yet to see a mechanical DNF for any driver. Given that the game is supposed to imitate 70ies era, this doesn't resemble that era at all. And at the same time, there are 10 fixed teams, 25 points system and modern tyre behaviour with 3 dry compounds and tyres not surviving the course of the race.

Information provided to the player is severely lacking - you only see current and fastest lap time per driver and the gap to the next one, and sector times are only seen in qualifying via modern-F1 color indicators (white/green/purple). Not even a gap to first place. Lap times are so erratic that there is no feel that you are in control of anything. And also there is a bug with the gap display that the value changes +/-2 seconds each time the driver crosses the finish line (or somewhere there), then changes back.

Overall, I'd give it a go if it were an Early Access game, but seeing that it's quite past release and developers seem to switch their focus to a new game, I would not recommend it, better look at Motorsport Manager.

They found a golden formula. Addictive, exciting and fulfilling. Simple yet elegant. Great UI. The art style is GORGEOUS. I started it and lost 3.5 hours immediately. PLUS: This game creates story.

I LOVE this game!

PS: I can understand why there is a weird mix between modern and classic rules. As a 79ies F1 fan I long for a classic mode with classic rules. We'll see, maybe I can mod it by myself. I mod seldomly, but this game... there is the itch!

Extremely simplistic, gets boring very soon.