F1 2020 is announced and officially on its way.
One of the new features which has us most excited is My Team. The brief premise we have seen so far suggests it will be the F1 team manager mode that the community have wanted for years.
Only a handful of details were revealed about the mode. You will be the 11th team on the grid with a custom name and livery. You'll also have a few key decisions to make like developing team facilities and picking an engine supplier.
What would could we see from My Team? Codemasters have promise that it wiil be a "new driver-manager experience offering a unique insight into the world of F1". But what does that really mean?
Option for Management only
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Obviously, the bulk of players will want to go into this mode controlling both the on and off-track action like FIFA. However, some will want a solely management experience, like that you get in Football Manager and F1 Manager.
It's unheard of these days for a driver to manage the F1 team he's driving for. We haven't really seen that since the 70s, so having an option to turn off the driving side of this mode would be realistic.
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There should be enough on offer when it comes to R&D, staff management and sponsors to keep you busy. Plus, a top-down management mode like F1 Manager would be just as challenging as driving the car yourself, perhaps even more so.
Media interviews
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We've written about how the interviews can be better for F1 2020 but these should be included for My Team.
As a team boss, you will be scrutinised and criticised even more than your drivers, so this is a necessary inclusion.
Even if they're in the same guise as 2019, interviews would be very welcome in My Team. Improving the quality and variety of questions would go a long way to resolving some of the issues of the previous game though.
Proper contract negotiations
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In F1 2019 Career Mode, players are given four opportunities throughout the year to negotiate their contract. That in itself is unrealistic, but what's really in the realms of fantasy are the end of season deals.
Emma (your agent) just whips out a selection of contracts from interested teams without any prior discussion from you. For example, if Red Bull are interested in your services, your agent will notify you of this and ask what you think of moving there long before an agreement in principle is finalised.
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For My Team, this would be translated in the form of rumours in the press, because there's no smoke without fire.
For the negotiations themselves, Codemasters can learn a thing or two from EA. FIFA has had full cutscenes for transfers for a few years now and these would be perfect for Formula 1.
You'd first talk to the team and then, if your offer is accepted, the driver. Obviously, if a driver is out of contract at the end of the year, you'd just speak to the them and cut out their team.
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With full avatars in-game, there's no reason why a similar system to FIFA's can't be introduced into the official F1 game.
Testing
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Something that has never really been included in Codemasters' F1 games is testing. Testing is crucial to make sure that the parts that you've assembled make a good race car. Pre-season testing is arguably the most important time of the season, especially for those that develop the car.
Obviously, there should be an option to not have this in your My Team save. There's no need to throw the casual players off by making this mandatory.
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The way that testing should work would be for you to send drivers out on runs to examine areas of the car such as engine, aerodynamics, and chassis. The more runs you do, the more reliable the performance projections will become the first race of the season.
The harder the driver pushes, the more likely they are to suffer a mechanical failure. This would cost valuable track time but would also increase your car's reliability, if you can fix the issue.
Hiring Formula 2 graduates
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F1 2020 is confirmed to include both the 2019 and 2020 F2 series, so it'd only seem right to have it featured in My Team. Formula 2 is the direct feeder series to Formula 1, meaning that the drivers there are ones that we will see take the jump up in the coming seasons.
Because you're a new team on the grid, you likely won't have much money to play with, so the drivers you'll be choosing will be young. It'd be nice to also include how much sponsorship money each driver will bring to the team, as this is key to who gets hired and who doesn't in real life.
Having F2 drivers in the selection pool will also help alleviate the issues of older drivers racing throughout the 10-season run of the F1 game. If Kimi Raikkonen were to race all of these years, he'd be 51 by the end of the game, not exactly realistic.
Licensing could cause issues here, but as both series are fully licensed, that's unlikely to be a sticking point.
F1 2020 will be available on PS4, Xbox One, PC and Google Stadia on 10 July.