Motorsport Manager for Nintendo Switch Review

It’s time to start hiring, firing, building parts and constructing your HQ as Motorsport Manager is on the switch. The question is, is it worth your time?

Developed by Playsport, Motorsport Manager for the Nintendo Switch sees you, the player, create your own racing team. You also create yourself as well as your racing team. Starting from one of three classes in the lower tier, you will need to hire your drivers, mechanics and engineers in the hopes of moving up to the top-tier.

So let us start from the beginning, you will create a team principal, which will be you. However don’t worry about spending ages on this, as there is not much in terms of customisation. Once this is done you select your backstory from three options. Each backstory will have some benefit to it. Once this is selected, it is on to deciding between which race series you wish to enter. In tier four you can decide between open wheel and GT series.

Now it is time to get down to customising your car, and naming your team. Once more I am left feeling slightly underwhelmed with the amount of choices for customisation. There are only 7 livery design, and I just feel that more options would be nice. Now we really don’t see the design of the car that much, so this maybe is a reason why there is not more. However I feel like there still should be. You then decide your colour scheme, don’t worry about this too much. Motorsport manager allows you to change the way cars look whenever you like, something which I tend to do at the start of a new season.

Motorsport Manager, like Football Manager, has little icons that you can click on to help you understand what things do, which is handy at the start as on first glance things can seem a little overwhelming.

Once everything is created it is time to start the real work, you will already have the staff you need, however you can take a look at them, and start deciding who stays and who goes. You are able to start looking at building parts to improve your car, apply sponsors to help raise money and take a look at slowly improving your HQ, as well as sorting out your supplier network.

Yep sounds a lot, but again Motorsport Manager has you covered with a slight tutorial to help you get to grips with everything. Truth is, it looks like a lot to do, but you will quickly pick everything up in no time.

Once you are happy, it is on to the racing part of Motorsport Manager, and in truth this is the section that I felt it just seemed to lack slightly. Don’t get me wrong, I have enjoyed managing my team to wins. Let us get into it. You see the game has the race weekend over 3 days, if you are like me you are thinking there is a day for practise, qualifying and then race day. Nope, there is only qualifying and race day, and the qualifying felt like when I would jump onto F1 on the PS4 and wanted to do quick qualifying sessions.

So how does it work, well your driver has a mechanic that has a setup skill, displayed by spanners. Before the driver is sent out, you can select from some cards, each can use a set amount of your mechanics skill. The trick is to try and select up to 4 cards without going bust, as if that happens your driver goes out to do a lap, without making any improvements to the car. Your drivers will more than likely be able to do around 3 laps, giving you a change to improve your car 3 times. There are not three qualifying stages. There is only one. This is where I felt like they could have made it feel like what you see when watching the F1. Still however as you get use to this system of trying to select the right card/s in order to try and improve your car, you find yourself getting to really enjoy it, wondering if you will go bust or not.

During the race you decide when to pit, keeping an eye on the tire wear and the condition of the car. You can also select options for tire wear and fuel consumption, and that’s about it really. Motorsport manager also allows you prioritise drivers. You may encounter a virtual safety car, or an actual safety car. Despite the lack of features for the actual race day, it’s the other things you do that I mentioned that really make Motorsport Manager addictive. Deciding what car part to build and to which driver to give it to; it’s a balancing act.

As you play you will earn influence points, which you can use to steal parts from other teams, to helping get drivers to start contract talks. Drivers as well earn points which you will spend on improving them to their potential.

Around halfway through the season, you can start funding research into next year’s car. Once you reach the end of a season, you can opt to start training 3 young drivers which then, at the end of the next season, you could hire one if you feel that any of them are good enough. Depending on how well you have done, you may have unlocked the next tier to go into tougher races, or just stay in your tier in order to earn more money to help fund yourself in a higher tier.

The look of the Motorsport Manager is basic, and don’t expect high detail or anything like that, as that is not going to happen, if you played Football Manager you will pretty much know what you’re getting. Little detail and no close-ups of the cars racing.

Motorsport Manager overall is an amazingly addictive game. The amount of staff I have replaced in the search of hoping to get the best is unbelievable: Swapping drivers if one has not been performing to the standards I want to stealing another team’s part. Motorsport Manager in my opinion is best played undocked, as I have been playing it while having something playing on my TV in the background, as I decide the next part of my supplier chain I am going to expand, or who is going to be my next sponsor.

REVIEW CODE: A complimentary Nintendo Switch code was provided to Bonus Stage for this review. Please send all review code enquiries to press@4gn.co.uk.