Golden Lap Review

Funselektor Labs and Strelka Games evoke the golden age of hi-octane racing with the motorsport management game Golden Lap. Does a throwback to a more cavalier era of racing give it a refreshing flair?

Modern F1 Racing is undoubtedly more rigid and tech-heavy than past iterations. The car is increasingly the deciding factor in victory. While there are still personalities in the sport, it’s hard not to be nostalgic for the legends of the racetrack and the hazy dream of a slightly more ramshackle time when sideburns and mustaches were as large as the drivers’ egos.

Well, Funselektor Labs certainly understands this with Golden Lap. What could be a dry motorsport management sim on paper is instead fused with that dreamy glow of yesteryear, where you take on the mantle of team manager and bring together a maverick troupe of engineers, crew, and drivers to win championships and cement your collective place in motorsport history.

The most crucial way Golden Lap puts personality into management is by pushing personalities to the front of the queue. Every person you hire in Golden Lap has a background, a story that could lead you to glory or ruin. This isn’t a management game for the micromanagers; for me, that made Golden Lap much more accessible as a management sim. There are plenty of hardcore sims out there for motorheads with the passion for tweaking every wingnut and hydrofoil to the nth degree, so having a more casual one that still contains the melodrama and excitement of racing without the spreadsheet work is not taking anything away from that. It’s also still got plenty of tweaking and tuning of its own, albeit quite streamlined by comparison.

It’s a nice balance of competitive sport and people management that creates a surprisingly high amount of drama and strategy from a minimalist setup.  The UI offers a clean and simple slate of information for players to grasp quickly. There is no fluff, no mind-boggling menus, just simple, easy-to-understand choices.

Races themselves also maintain simplicity. Viewed in map-like form, colored dots representing each car go around the track as you focus on pitstops, strategies, and reacting to other issues that crop up with clouds lazily drifting into view, bringing the threat of race-changing rain. The general visual style of Golden Lap is a sparkling mixture of pastel nostalgia and 90s video game art reverence. People are displayed in the form of simple cartoonish headshots that evoke the hairy flair of a bygone era. Coupled with the way they behave, this gives each crew member a distinct identity that you’ll need to learn all about if you’re going to win races.

In the hiring process, it’s off the track where the real work goes into creating a winning formula. Those personalities make or break your team, and it’s often a case of compromise to achieve your dream. A driver might be a hotheaded dumbbell in general life, but if he races like a demon, it could be worth enduring that for results. But what if that clashes with your kind-hearted but stoic chief engineer? What if the pit crew are equally as combative as your driver? Sparks could fly whatever you do, but the elevated drama makes it all the more exciting when you win while juggling the explosive fallouts in your rambunctious team.

I’m sure many people would prefer to get in the cockpit themselves and claim the victories first-hand, but Golden Lap warmed me to the idea of watching dots ‘drive’ around a track as something to be excited by. It’s a personal thing, as I’m finicky with the kind of driving and management games I get on with. It’s quite a nice surprise to find both working together in such a simple yet satisfying way.

While the makeup of Golden Lap is unofficial teams, drivers, and the like, the game promotes a healthy relationship with the modding community and encourages people of all skill levels to try and alter the game in their own way. So, if you want to have a Benneton team with Senna and Schumacher or bring the Verstappens together in the 90s Williams car, there are ways to get there.