Motorsport Manager Mobile 2 Tips & Tricks: A Complete Guide to Win a Championship

We might as well admit it — we’re really hooked on Playsport Games’ Motorsport Manager Mobile 2. Now available on iOS and Android, this is an auto racing management game, where everything boils down to the strategies you make for your drivers, the parts you buy for your cars, and how well you do the duties of a grand prix racing manager. This isn’t your average racing game where timing informs your success — you are the manager, and that means you hire the drivers and staff, build your headquarters, buy or build parts, and make all those crucial decisions that may turn out to be the difference between victory and defeat.

We already gave you a rather exhaustive beginner’s guide to the game, and the fact that it’s much longer than our usual beginner’s guide is proof positive that this is a very deep and well-designed game. But having a beginner’s guide also means we should have an intermediate/advanced one, and we’ve got it for you below — our Motorsport Manager Mobile 2 strategy guide for those who may have done well in their first season (without necessarily heading to the off-season tasks just yet), and need some guidance on how to hack those succeeding seasons.

1. Make Sure You Have A Backup Game

This may sound like a basic tip, but since we didn’t include it in our beginner’s guide, we’re starting off our intermediate/advanced guide with it. We highly recommend having a backup game or two when playing Motorsport Manager Mobile 2, and to keep those backups regularly updated, should things continue to go swimmingly in your main save game. Bear in mind that you’ve got three save game slots, and you’ll want to make the most out of them by backing up your good save games so you have something to return to in case you perform poorly in a race, make a bad purchase, or commit any other mistake that could set you back.

2. At The Moment, Rage-Quitting Is Fine, But Do So At Your Own Risk

The above tip is pretty much designed to steer you away from the temptation of rage-quitting, or in this game’s case, quitting your game after you, for example, retire from a race or finish below a sponsor’s expectations for the bonus money. But based on what we’ve observed so far, Playsport doesn’t penalize players who rage-quit. The game goes on as normal, and if you quit a game before the race is over, you can retry the race without any consequence. But be warned that game developers, of course frown upon rage-quitters, and who knows if one day Playsport will release an update that penalizes anyone who quits in the middle of a race?

3. When Choosing Parts, Take Reliability Into Account

At the end of the day, you want to make each of your two cars better over time, and you want to enhance each car’s performance part-by-part. But performance is not the only thing you should be looking at when buying new parts. Price doesn’t even tell the whole story, although it’s easy to knock yourself in the red by overspending for a part that could serve as a potential game-changer for one of your cars. You should also be looking at reliability, because as we’ll explain in the next tip, an unreliable part could seriously lower your car’s overall reliability stats, and jeopardize your chances of even finishing a race! If a part has good performance and could improve your car’s overall stats but is also likely to break down (think below 50 percent reliability), save your money and wait until the next batch of new parts arrives.

4. Ideally, Your Cars’ Reliability Should Be At This Level

As we mentioned above, an unreliable car has a much better chance of retiring early than a car whose parts are solid across the board. So what should the reliability stat be to ensure you don’t retire early due to one technical problem or another?

Generally, we would recommend that each of your cars are at the 70 to 75 percent reliability level or better. Anything lower than that could lead to some tense moments on the racetrack, as you hope against hope that the reliability indicator doesn’t turn red, and that your drivers don’t radio in with some bad news about dodgy brakes, a part or two flying off, etc. And if you happen to be doing particularly well in a race, especially if you’re pushing your tires or your engine beyond their limit (Aggressive driving, Overtake engine mode), that tends to accelerate the wear and tear process. Don’t make every race a case of “will they or won’t they finish” — get that Reliability stat up to 70 to 75 percent or better, and enjoy some peace of mind, knowing that your cars are hardly likely to make an early exit.

5. Let The Weather Indicator Be Your Best Friend

On the lower portion of the race menu, you’ll see a weather indicator that tells you the weather at the moment, the water level on the track, and how many more minutes the weather may remain as such. That latter variable should guide you as you decide when to pit, and what type of tires to choose when sending orders over to the pit crew.

We cannot stress it enough — having the right type of tires to match the weather and track conditions is of paramount importance. While driving aggressively can take its toll on your cars’ tires, nothing wears out tires faster than using dry tires on a wet track, or vice versa. And it’s very easy to mistime your predictions of a weather change and base your pit stop strategy on those predictions. But there is a way to avoid such a pitfall, as we’ll be explaining in the next paragraph.

Even if your tires’ health is below the 25 percent mark, you might want to hold off on a pit stop a little longer if it means making sure that the track would be wet once you pit for intermediates, or that the track would be dry once you pit for any of the available dry tires. Remember that even a few in-game seconds on the wrong tires could do some serious wear and tear!

6. Dealing With Dilemmas

Every now and then, you will be confronted with Dilemmas, which require you to choose one option out of two and make the right decision for the good of your team. For example, you may be asked if you want to invest in an expensive parts upgrade that could improve your cars’ reliability significantly, but also tank your budget in the process. You may also be asked if you want to earn some extra cash by having one of your drivers take part in an ad campaign, albeit at the expense of their happiness. Sometimes, the Dilemmas can be more benign — when choosing training regimens for a driver, should you go with immediate improvement, or a permanent increase to their improvement rate?

When making your choices in the Dilemmas, you should always think of the big picture. Using the above examples, you can go for the parts upgrade if you’ve already invested in next year’s car, and have a couple sponsors whose contracts are due to expire in a week or two. That means you probably won’t be too much in the red by investing in the upgrade, and would likely be able to earn back what you spent in a couple weeks’ time. Send your driver off to play a hemorrhoid in a TV commercial for some extra cash (yes, seriously, this is one of the Dilemmas), just as long as they don’t have any negative stat modifiers holding them down. And for the last example, immediate improvement is the way to go for older, more seasoned drivers, while improvement rate increases, of course, are more suited to younger, newer drivers.

Those are just some of the possible Dilemmas you may encounter, but once again, the key is looking at the bigger picture, and weighing every possible consequence of each of the two options.

7. Which Driver Stats Should You Prioritize?

Each driver in Motorsport Manager Mobile 2 has six driver stats — Braking, Consistency, Cornering, Focus, Overtaking, and Smoothness. As a driver ages, these stats improve, with the speed of improvement depending on their Improvement Rate. They can also deteriorate once a driver exceeds a certain age, usually their early-30s. You’ve also got Sponsor Appeal, which influences the quality of sponsors you may encounter throughout the course of the game. But which stats should you be looking at when hiring new drivers, or improving an existing driver’s numbers?

To be perfectly honest, strategy is more important than stats in most cases, but that doesn’t mean the stats don’t have any bearing whatsoever. If you’re dealing with a young driver, you should work on the mental stats such as Consistency, Focus, and Smoothness, as these tend to be low when you’re dealing with kids. Great driving skills can be dulled by a lack of mental sharpness, so it’s important that you improve those three above others when it comes to the teenagers and those in their early, or even mid-20s. But on a more general level, you should prioritize those stats that are far removed from their maximum potential — each driver’s stat has a specific cap to it, which means this isn’t a game where you can customize your drivers so that they peak as all-rounders at best, or jacks of all trades at worst!

As for hiring new drivers, look for those whose driving-related stats — their Braking, Cornering, and Overtaking — are better than others, with good Sponsor Appeal also a prime consideration. You may be signing the brightest young prospect in terms of skills, but if their Sponsor Appeal is the pits, you won’t be bringing as much money into the team as you should.

8. Signing New Drivers To Contracts

Fortunately, signing drivers to contracts, or re-signing existing ones, isn’t too difficult in Motorsport Manager Mobile 2. Depending on the driver, you’ll get one to three chances to seal the deal, and if your prospective hire loses patience, that will kick off a cool-off period — usually about 100 days — where you cannot talk contract with that driver.

Our best advice for signing or re-signing good drivers is to start off with a good offer in your very first try. Make sure the contract isn’t too long (typically ending after the next season is completed), and that your basic pay and signing bonus offers are usually right around the middle. You can then work your way toward a better deal in your next few tries, if the first offer isn’t satisfactory. Keep in mind as well that drivers tend to have less patience if they’re older and more experienced, which means it’s usually going to be much easier for you to sign younger, presumably more naive drivers, than those who have a good deal of racing experience to boast of.

9. The Young Driver Program(me) – Everything You Need To Know

Motorsport Manager Mobile 2 comes with an interesting little feature that gets unlocked once you’ve completed a season, finished re-signing your drivers (if needed), and earned your prize money for the season that was. Using the game’s British spelling, the Young Driver Programme costs you $200,000 the first time around, which is usually chump change compared to the prize money you should have at the end of the season. What’s in it for you, and should you invest in the future?

The Young Driver Programme, for starters, requires you to choose three teenagers from a pool of about 12 or so. Each of them has their own background — they could be poor country “bumpkins,” social outcasts, jocks, model students, basically every trope there is for high school-age teenagers. But that’s irrelevant compared to the other stats associated with each teen — their Max Potential, Work Ethic, Stability, and Ego. Max Potential is self-explanatory — typically, you want to go with someone who tops out at a 70 or better, maybe even 75 or better if you’ve got your sights seriously set on league promotion and the long-term. Work Ethic determines how quickly they could improve over time, as it’s a similar stat to the Improvement Rate of your existing drivers. Stability indicates how likely or unlikely they are to encounter untoward incidents that could lower their potential, and finally, Ego determine their future Sponsor Appeal, or how they conduct themselves in media appearances.

When looking for young drivers to train, you should avoid anyone that has low (or worse) Work Ethic and Stability, or anyone that has a high or very high Ego rating. Having these stats at the aforementioned levels could compromise each recruit’s potential, as you monitor them over the course of the season. So even if you’ve got a young driver whose Max Potential starts out at 90+, that could easily take a nosedive as he or she joins gangs, flunks exams, gets arrested, or gets into other kinds of trouble young people normally get into. All this is documented as the weeks go by in the race season, so make sure you’re committing to some good kids on and off the track!

10. Should You Invest In The Young Driver Programme Or Not?

Once the season ends, you will be shown each young driver’s potential, assuming you invested in the program(me). You will then be asked to choose only one driver out of the three, and if you end up with someone whose potential is still in the 70-plus range or better, then by all means, sign ‘em up and replace your weaker and/or 30-plus driver. But should you even invest in the program to begin with?

Our advice is to invest in the Young Driver Programme while you’ve got the 90 percent off introductory offer for a first-timer. That’s going to set you back by only $200,000, as mentioned above, and even if your top driver wins a championship in your first season, you should also remember that their overall rating usually tops out at three stars out of five. That makes them expendable, assuming one or more of your recruits does well throughout the course of the Young Driver Programme. Then again, it’s also important that you choose wisely upon investing that $200,000 — Max Potential is important, but you don’t want to hire anyone who’s lazy (poor Work Ethic), a potential troublemaker (poor Stability), or full of themselves (high Ego)!

After that introductory offer, the cost of the Young Driver Programme goes back to its normal $2 million price, and you can safely lay off it unless you’re having trouble scoring points or moving forward with one of your existing drivers. As the old adage goes, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!

11. Invest In Your HQ

It’s easy to overlook your headquarters, but it’s nonetheless important to plunge a few million dollars into HQ upgrades each season. And you should make those investments equally across each of the three upgrade trees — Financial, Part Development, and Drivers.

The Financial tree pertains to upgrades that could improve your team’s bottom line, such as monetary bonuses for each race, added Sponsor Appeal, etc. The Part Development tree refers to the upgrades you need to make so that you can improve the performance and reliability of the parts that you build. Lastly, the Driver tree is for all sorts of driver improvements, may it be additional stats, more bonus Improvement Points, and even more accurate weather forecasts for qualifying runs and races.

As you can see, each HQ upgrade contributes toward the betterment of your team, so we believe each tree is equally important. And it’s also a must that you make some investments into those upgrades, ramping things up (if possible) with each passing season, as the upgrades get progressively more expensive as you move further along each tree.

12. About Promotion, And What To Expect Upon Promotion

The leagues in Motorsport Manager Mobile 2 work a bit like association football leagues do — we say “a bit,” because we’ve yet to see AI teams get promoted or demoted. Human-controlled teams, however, can be promoted by winning the teams championship of the league they’re currently in. Winning the Driver’s Championship is not enough, which is why it’s important that you have two strong drivers in your team, and not a mix of a good driver and a scrub, just like how you start as a first-time player of the game.

A word of caution, though, for anyone who’s getting promoted for the first time — winning races won’t be as easy as it was once you’re in a higher league! And it also might not be a wise idea to opt for promotion too early — you do have the option to refuse promotion and save it for a later time! Before moving on to the next league, make sure your headquarters is very much up to speed, and that you’ve made good progress in each of the upgrade trees.

13. New Leagues, New Rules

As you go from strength to strength in the game, the rules will change, with each successive league harder than the last. The first league, the European Racing Series, keeps things simple — everyone gets points at the end of a race, and you’ve got slightly more than enough fuel to last the entire race, with a refueling ban in place. You’ve also got your Engine and Gearbox as “spec parts,” or stock parts based on the money you invested on the next year’s car. But as you move on to the Asia-Pacific Cup, only the top 8 will get points, and your Engine will be the only spec part. You’ll also need to take refueling into account when it comes to your pit strategy, as there’s no refueling ban. Lastly, the World Motorsport Championship has a refueling ban in place, both virtual and real safety cars for yellow flags, points for the top 10, and no spec parts.

The key thing, however, is that the competition ramps up — don’t expect to dominate right off the bat once you get promoted!