The licensed Formula One management genre had been dormant for over two decades following EA Sports' entry at the turn of the millennium. Frontier Developments — the British studio known for Elite Dangerous — secured an official license covering the Formula One, Formula 2, and Formula 3 championships from 2022 through 2025, enabling access to real teams, drivers, engineers, and circuits. The game was officially announced in March 2022 and developed on Unreal Engine 4.
F1 Manager 2022 positions itself as a more detailed management experience than the My Team mode introduced by Codemasters in F1 2020. At its core is a strategy editor through which players schedule pit stops, select tyre compounds, and set pace targets for each stint. The game models parts development and the cost cap framework introduced into the actual Formula One regulations, as well as ERS deployment and the onboard cameras used in real Formula One broadcasts.
Real drivers and engineers from Formula One, Formula 2, and Formula 3 are represented in the game. Team radio clips from actual Formula One drivers and race engineers feature within race simulations, and red flags are modelled. Commentary is provided by Karun Chandhok and David Croft, and the opening title sequences used in real Formula One broadcasts are replicated in the game's presentation, including authentic broadcast transition styling.
Denuvo anti-tamper technology was included on the PC version. Players who pre-ordered the game received five days of early access, from 25 August 2022 ahead of the 30 August general release.
Two months after the game's August 2022 release, Frontier Developments announced it was ceasing active development and support, a decision that drew significant negative reaction from the player base, who had flagged outstanding bugs that remained unresolved. Frontier subsequently reversed the statement and committed to continuing updates. The episode drew scrutiny given that the game had already sold below the studio's internal expectations, reaching approximately 600,000 units by January 2023.
Despite the commercial underperformance, Frontier publicly described F1 Manager 2022 as "a good first game in an important new annual franchise" and reiterated commitment to the series, leading to the development of F1 Manager 2023.
F1 Manager 2022 received generally favorable reviews for Windows and Xbox Series X/S versions according to Metacritic, while the PlayStation 5 version received mixed or average scores. In the United Kingdom, the game debuted as the fourth best-selling physical-media retail game of its release week. Critics praised the depth of the strategy editor and the authentic Formula One broadcast presentation, while some noted the gap between ambition and execution in areas such as AI behavior and bug stability at launch.
F1 Manager 2022 revived a dormant genre and established Frontier Developments as the holder of the official Formula One management license into the mid-2020s. Its troubled post-launch period — the premature development cessation and subsequent reversal — became one of the more discussed publisher communication missteps in racing game history. The game also drew comparisons to Codemasters' My Team mode in F1 2020, a mode widely seen as a stopgap rather than a dedicated management experience, underlining the appetite for a standalone Formula One management title while also setting a high bar for what players expected from a full retail product in the genre.