Hey Team Principals!

We hope that, like us, you've been enjoying a thrilling 2024 Formula One season so far.

Back at HQ, we've been hard at work on a significant upgrade package to take you to the front of the grid as we head towards Abu Dhabi. Update 1.9 contains a host of new features designed to enhance the realism and expand upon the information gathering and the endless drive for progress which is critical in ensuring teams make the right calls to take them to the top.

Alongside these new features, this update also contains a substantial suite of rebalancing and fixes!

Learn more about the new features in our recent blog post

• Pit lane starts now fully supported for player and AI teams based on real-world regulations
  
• Principals will be prompted before making a change that break Parc fermé rules and incur a pit lane start

• Principals can now focus drivers into three new distinct areas of development in order to use their skills to benefit your team
  
• This is also applicable to affiliate drivers, giving extra reason and purpose to make use of affiliate positions

• Added new "Team Suitability" rating uncovered when scouting staff and drivers to help inform hiring decisions
  
• The rating consider a variety of factors and results are dynamic dependent on the context

• Added new email content providing insight into negotiations and hiring happening elsewhere on the grid

• In cases where there is a risk of save file corruption, additional protections have been implemented. The option to 'Restart Season' will be removed in order to mitigate this risk.
  
• Fixed crash that could occur during processing
  
• Fixed crash that could occur when confirming sponsor plans in quick succession
  
• Fixed crash that could occur at the end of the Australian GP during a long play session

• Updated powertrain cost balance
  
• Changed powertain payment structure to monthly from annual
  
• Updated finances screen to accurately reflect costs

• Fixed occurrence of mandatory activities not paying out at the end of the sponsor period
  
• Fixed occurrence of DHL Fastest Pit Stop prize money not being paid
  
• Fixed occurrence of cost to break contracts not being charged
  
• Updated Finances help screen to reflect monthly payment structure for board and prize money

• Fixed Hamilton not going to Ferrari at the start of Season 2
  
• Added positive and negative opinion considerations to the driver and staff contract negotiation process
  
• Updated email content when player staff/drivers are approached by other teams
  
• Fixed counter offer reminder email not sending when counter offer is received and left unresponded on day of deadline
  
• Fixed Staff Changes email displaying incorrect contract info
  
• Fixed Accepted Contract email displaying incorrect cost to hire
  
• Fixed Team Roster Update email including incorrect contract info
  
• Fixed Staff Poached emails displaying contract length as 0
  
• Fixed incorrectly displayed affiliate contract length in Affiliates Overview panel
  
• Fixed incorrect or missing cost to break contract for immediate start dates
  
• Fixed the empty reaction window when a contract offer results in a negative reaction

• Fixed 'One for the Future' achievement not being awarded after signing an affiliate with an offer deadline of 7 days
  
• Improved AI regulation voting logic
  
• Fixed issue preventing player continuing with their current team after selecting to switch team having not been fired
  
• Fixed Car Performance Overall Ranking not aligning with individual attribute rankings
  
• Fixed engineers not returning after Design Centre fire dilemma
  
• Fixed engineer increase not applying correctly after Design Centre Improvement email
  
• Fixed "Best Driver Position" in End of Season Board Review not considering drivers who left during the season
  
• Fixed board attending grand prix after selecting 'Deny' in 'Board Attendance at Grand Prix' email
  
• Fixed issue where an affiliate driver could be selected for both cars

• Players will now see the Results page after simulating a Sprint session
  
• Fixed cars not attempting to unlap themselves during a race
  
• Fixed incorrect classification of drivers who DNF on the last lap ahead of other lapped cars
  
• Fixed driver and constructor standings shown during race weekend not including previous sprint race points
  
• Fixed 'DRS Enabled' notification displaying at beginning of practise & qualifying sessions in wet track conditions
  
• Fixed driver entering pit at end of flying lap when taking manual control during qualifying
  
• Fixed fastest lap being awarded to a driver who retires on lap 1
  
• Fixed Track Acclimitisation resetting to 0% after loading a mid-session save
  
• Fixed loss of focus when navigating to the 'Car Set Up' during Qualifying
  
• Fixed timing tower losing coloured border after opening menus during a yellow or red flag event
  
• Fixed the data view snapping to top when scrolling down during a race
  
• Fixed affiliate drivers having no position shown in their Driver Panel after setting lap times in practise
  
• Fixed full screen map briefly showing blurry textures
  
• Fixed rear lights on cars not turning on during a race
  
• Fixed cars sometimes appearing to not touch the track
  
• Fixed Create-A-Team cars clipping through safety car

• Albert Park: Fixed cars driving over the kerb on pit entry
  
• Austin: Adjusted cars' speed out of pit lane and into turn 1
  
• Hermanos Rodriguez: Fixed missing and incorrectly positioned cars in team garages
  
• Las Vegas: Fixed incorrectly placed 2nd DRS Zone
  
• Monaco: Fixed rare instance of safety car blocking pit exit
  
• Shanghai: Fixed incorrect pit lane marker
  
• Suzuka Fixed possibility of cars going through the barrier on Turn 2

• Improved balance when randomising generated staff when beginning a new 'Create a Team' career
  
• Fixed car livery model colour not being consistent with colour selected in UI
  
• Fixed incorrect starting budget being displayed for 'Your Story' origin
  
• Fixed incorrectly categorised livery sponsors
  
• Removed duplicate 'Team Name' header from the Team Branding menu
  
• Removed 'Undo' button when no changes present to undo

• Fixed Charles Leclerc's career history not showing for 2022 and 2023
  
• Fixed Jack Doohan's career history not showing for 2022
  
• Fixed Ayumu Iwasa's career history not showing for 2022
  
• Fixed incorrect race distance listed for Las Vegas and Qatar in the Circuits screen
  
• Fixed the monthly affiliates development email not showing affiliates signed in the previous season
  
• Fixed missing text in Design Centre Improvement email
  
• Fixed the Seasons Remaining value showing '-1' in the Mid-Season Board Review
  
• Fixing 'Engine Cooling' not being displayed as a Negative Effect of sidepod and chassis damage
  
• Improved logic prompting notifications in UI
  
• Fixed cancelled projects still incrementing the part number
  
• Various UI improvements to the Facilities screen
  
• Various corrections to strings and formatting
  
• Updated Race Replay difficulty indicators

Thank you for your continued support and feedback! As always, if you encounter any issues with your game, please report them here: https://issues.frontierstore.net/reported-issues/f1-manager-24

Welcome back to Frontier HQ Team Principals!

Whilst you’ve been delivering pole positions and World Championships, we’ve been hard at work in the factory since launch, and we’re now excited to lift the covers off Update 1.9, the next major update for F1® Manager 2024. We’re adding some highly requested new features to the game, so let’s get straight into the details!

Pitlane starts are now fully supported in F1® Manager 24! Using the real-world regulations as a base, these bring an additional level of authenticity to the game. Parc fermé rules take effect from whenever your car first goes on track during Q1 or SQ1; a strict list of rules is then applied:

• Front wing angle can be changed.
  
• Like-for-like parts can be swapped (For example, a broken wing can be replaced with another wing of the same design.)
  
• Swapping non-like-for-like parts incurs a pitlane start.
  
• Component changes will result in a pitlane start (i.e. engines, gearboxes etc).
  
• All other setup changes will incur a pitlane start.
  
• Cars starting from the pitlane may not exit the pitlane until they receive the greenlight, which is only given when the starting grid has fully passed the exit of the pitlane.

We're excited to see how you navigate these new limitations, but don't worry about keeping your F1 rulebook to hand, you'll be fully prompted before making a change which will incur a penalty! Can you turn a bad qualifying or mechanical fault into a tactical advantage later in the season?

We've also gone back over the Starting Grid scenarios from this season and ensured any cars which started from the pitlane in the real races now also start from the pitlane in the game to ensure you're able to challenge yourself as you seek to replay the races from the official 2024 season so far, can you make points from the pitlane?

You can now focus drivers into distinct areas of development in order to use their skills to benefit your team. This includes your affiliates, giving you an extra reason to seek out the right people to fill your affiliate slots with the skills to enhance your team how you see fit. There are three ways you can choose to deploy the drivers in your stable....

Driver Development: Drivers continue to focus on themselves and increasing their own abilities.

Car Development: Drivers use their skills to boost the research & design of car parts, reducing the time it takes to complete that research. They also contribute to increasing preparedness heading into races, giving a setup boost. As you'd expect, the amount your driver can assist is based on their expertise; more experienced drivers will have a larger effect than drivers new to the series. The effects of this focus stack, meaning you can deploy up to three of your drivers to give a bigger boost! However, bear in mind that drivers focusing on car development will temporarily sacrifice their development rates to do so.

Marketability: Use your drivers’ marketability to help you meet your sponsorship goals more easily. Do you choose to send your young hotshots out or use your more seasoned drivers to make a bigger impact? Meeting your sponsorship goals more easily means less distraction to the wider team at the cost of reducing that driver's focus. Drivers focusing on marketability gain an increase in their own marketability temporarily while focusing on this area while dropping their own development rate.

The intensity of a driver’s contribution to these areas increases over time, you'll need to keep drivers focused for at least a month to see the full effect, moving a driver to a new focus will reset the intensity of their contribution, so choose when to deploy certain drivers carefully to maximise the impact and minimise the disruption.

We know the task of recruiting the right people for your team can be tricky – this is where the brand new "Team Suitability" rating comes in to help. This suitability rating is uncovered as part of the process when scouting potential staff members and gives you a broad view of if this person is right for your team whilst listing out the reasoning. A variety of factors, including rating vs current staff members, salary, buy out, Championship standing and more are taken into consideration to help give you an initial indication of how well this person could fare within your team. The results are dynamic, and things like your own team’s bank balance and Championship standing will affect the rating, as always, it's you as Team Principal who makes the final decision, but this new feature will give you a basic underlying idea of your compatibility.

In addition to informing you how potential staff might fit into your team, all staff members in the game now have an opinion of your team. This means you will now find staff members in other teams might not be interested in hearing a contract proposal from you! If you are a backmarker team, don't expect staff in a Championship winning team to be willing to take a risk on joining you, even if your bank balance is flush! Every staff member's opinion is unique to them, so you may find soon-to-be out of contract staff are more open to joining teams outside their comfort zone. Just like Team Suitability; their views of you change dynamically, so make sure you're best placed to pick up key staff through the year as opinions change.

"Silly season" comes to F1® Manager! We've added some additional content to emulate what goes on in the world of F1® within F1® Manager. Your scouting team and the F1® journalists have been busy and will send you some new high-value information to help you navigate the world of signings and contracts that was previously behind closed doors!

Contract rumours: You'll now receive a condensed report from your scouting team about high value targets that are currently in negotiations with other teams. This is your chance to act quickly and convince someone you might have your eye on, before they sign for a rival. Your team even has the scouting reports ready for you to jump in and start negotiations if you see fit.

Summer Signings: When other teams make key signings, you'll now find out about when it happens and be able to plan accordingly. Find out about those big-name signings in the news just as you'd expect in real life, and immerse yourself in all the off-track action.

We've been listening to your feedback and we're making a slight change to how you pay for your engines: instead of a lump sum payable on the 1st of January, we're now making this instalment-based to spread the cost over the year, payable on the 1st of each month. This should help budgeting for your team and ensure you don't have a difficult start to the year especially in season two when your engine payment is first due. This will take effect from the next new season you experience in the game.