Open Wheel Manager 2 news & patch notes

Hi everyone,

My name is Ivan — I’m the developer of Open Wheel Manager and Open Wheel Manager 2. A few months ago, after parting ways with the publisher of Open Wheel Manager 2, I began working on a new racing management game called Racing Series Manager. This time, I’m developing it solo.

This isn’t a sequel. It’s a fresh start with a different focus and philosophy. I’d like to give you a quick introduction to this game.

Why a new game?

• The rights to OWM1 and OWM2 remain with the publisher.

• I’ve dropped the resource-based system, where accumulating a certain resource (design points, production points, etc) let you “buy” an upgrade. While it functionally mirrored the classic week-by-week progression model, it felt significantly worse in practice.

• The game will now move to day-by-day event generation instead of weekly cycles. Because of that, reusing code from OWM2 no longer made sense.

Key differences between Racing Series Manager and OWM2?

• OWM2 was more focused on race-day action, while the off-track gameplay lacked depth. In Racing Series Manager, off-track team development is the core of the experience, while the race generator is a hybrid — combining a live timing mode similar to OWM2 with light 3D elements.

• In Racing Series Manager, every in-house car component becomes a distinct gameplay entity - blueprint. This opens the door to a wide range of new mechanics — most notably, espionage and knowledge leakage.

• Espionage adds variety to car development, allowing you to progress through multiple paths: by copying blueprints from successful rivals or by developing your own from scratch.

• While the blueprints for each component belong to the team, they’re created by individual staff members — and it’s those designers and engineers who accumulate knowledge about the components. When they move between teams, they take that knowledge with them.

• As you might have guessed from the title, the game will feature multiple playable championships. These will be independent series — just like in real-world motorsport — without any promotion or relegation system like the one used in football leagues.

• RSM will feature fully-fledged negotiations with sponsors and tire suppliers — not the simplified versions seen in OWM2.

When will the game be released?

I don’t have a specific release date yet. If the game sounds interesting to you, the best thing you can do right now is add it to your wishlist.

How much will the game cost?

RSM will be cheaper than OWM2 — I want as many players as possible to experience it. I noticed that many players who bought OWM1 didn’t go on to purchase OWM2 — and I believe the noticeably high price was a major reason for that.

Game support

The game will receive long-term support. I’m not planning another title until everything planned for RSM is delivered.

Where can I follow the game’s news?

Discord - https://discord.gg/XDxt5Xm (the most up-to-date source of information)

Tiktok - https://www.tiktok.com/@racingseriesmanager

X - https://x.com/mrvozhik

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/paprikash.works/

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/racingseriesmanager/

Thanks for sticking with me through the OWM journey. I’m excited to build something new — and I hope you’ll join me.

— Ivan

🛠 Fixes

• Fixed an issue where AI teams could sign a contract with your academy driver before their existing contract had expired

• Corrected incorrect display of retirement plans in staff profiles

• Fixed a bug where AI teams would sometimes fail to hire available staff despite having open positions

• Resolved an issue where championship victory congratulation messages were repeatedly sent every week

• Fixed a freeze when a private team owner (AI manager) retired and decide to sell all their shares,

• Addressed a rare crash that could occur during autosave

🔄 Changes

• AI teams now evaluate whether to promote an academy driver based on the average skills of drivers who available for next season contract, rather than the average skills of all drivers in the championship. This reduces the chance of an AI team replacing a top-tier driver with a mediocre academy prospect

• Drivers now take into account the number of open seats in the championship when negotiating contracts. If no top-tier teams have vacancies, they may lower their team strength demands accordingly

A records screen has been added. It features the all-time Top 10 drivers across various categories. Filtering is available both for the entire championship and for individual teams.

• Fixed a bug where a driver with sponsorship offered zero salary instead of a sponsorship fee.

• Adjusted sponsor finance parameter when the mod contains not enough sponsors for each team rank. Previously, if the mod had too few sponsors with a finance rating of 3 or lower, "outsider" rank teams were unable to sign any sponsors and would go bankrupt.

This long-awaited update brings important improvements to race generation modes. The new Live Timing mode, based on a text-and-table layout, combines fast race simulation with strategic control over driver pit strategy. The simplified interface also made it possible to implement multi-car collisions and safety car deployments.

The tyre performance model has been reworked. It now behaves non-linearly—tyres maintain their effectiveness longer and only noticeably drop off closer to the end of their lifespan. This allows for strong lap times over longer stints.

Version 1.1 changelog:

• New Live Timing mode

• Improved tyre performance model for both Live Timing and 3D modes

• Reworked weather changes in Live Timing and 3D

• Driver and staff skills now range from 1 to 20

• Board confidence penalty for missed targets halved

• Qualifying duel information moved from the News section to the Championship section

• Various bug fixes across the game and mod integration

During development, several cases of game freezes during the off-season were also addressed. If you have an older save affected by this issue, please check whether it now loads correctly after installing version 1.1. If the problem persists, you can send the save file to [email protected] or via Discord.

The editor has also been updated to the latest version: https://paprikashgames.com/OWM2EditorBuild.zip We fixed a number of bugs and added support for loading driver statistics from gpracingstats.com The external stats block is displayed in-game separately from internal stats and does not affect them in any way. To maintain compatibility with older mods, driver and staff parameters are still entered in the editor using a 1–10 scale and are automatically converted to a 1–20 scale in-game.

• Added manager skills
• The manager has an age, and managers can now retire.
• The manager has a personal balance, which will separate his finances from the team's balance
• You are now able to not only sell shares in your team, but you can also buy shares of other teams if they are put up for sale due to the team's financial situation.
• You can either sell your team to an investor (with a name change or without a change - according to the investor's decision), or buy an entire team in financial crisis (in this case, you will become the manager of the purchased team) - Note once you can only manage the team you have the highest controlling stake in.
• Private and factory teams now have slightly different left menu items. For example, when managing a factory team, bank loans are not available to you, and when managing a private team, salary limits are removed.
• Factory team board now have defined performance targets for each season to the manager. If they are not fulfilled, the trust of the team's board will decrease.
• When managing a factory team, you will need the consent of the team's board for some actions. For example, for the construction of infrastructure or the firing a driver.
• Authority points have been removed from the game due to loss of relevance.
• Drivers and staff now have a motivation skill. You can influence this by using the Motivation manager skill.

• Car setup has become more influential on the car performance in race weekend
• Reserve drivers can now participate only in practice sessions
• The team's income and expenses screen has become more detailed
• The salary demands of drivers have been reduced to avoid the constant withdrawal of successful drivers from the championship. If you are in the middle of a season, you will not notice this change until the next season.