Formula 1 Fantasy Strategy

Thumbs Up For F1 Fantasy Picks

This weekend is another Formula 1 race in Austria, and then next weekend will be a 2nd race on the same track. I've been trying to improve my strategy with picking my drivers and team for my Formula 1 Fantasy teams, so I've got a new plan for this weekend. Inspired by the book and movie Money Ball, I tried looking at all 20 drivers, and all 10 teams, and compared how many points each was scoring compared to their budget cost. With that in mind, I totally re-picked my Fantasy Team #1 as follows.

The weird thing with the F1 Fantasy League, is that the scoring is different than in the real races, and the prices of the drivers/teams with your set budget is not always the most logical. With that in mind, I took a look at the Fantasy points standings and values, did a quick calculation of how many points each driver/team have earned for their price, and came up with a ranking of most valuable ratio. Believe it or not, once I used that calculation to pick the best points-per-dollar top 5 drivers and the best team, the budget was exactly how much I had available! With no further ado, here are the top 5 drivers and 1 team based on the current F1 Fantasy League standings, heading into the first Austria Race: 

DRIVERS

1-Lando Norris

2-Max Verstappen 

3-Pierre Gasly

4-Sergio Perez

5-Mick Schumacher

TEAM

1-Red Bull

Real Formula 1, or Fantasy Formula 1?

Driver wise, Norris is NOT leading the real F1, Pierre Gasly is nowhere near 3rd place, and Mick Schumacher hasn’t even scored one point in real life yet, and much less made the top 5. However, the Fantasy game isn’t real life, and hopefully my calculations will pay off for

my Fantasy team. One drawback to my team right now is that with Red Bull as my constructor and BOTH of their drivers on my team, I’m really counting on them to continue their outstanding performance. At the last race in France, the Red Bull drivers finished 1^st and 3^rd, so that was their best drive of the year, putting both drivers on the podium. The McLaren guys also had a great race, finishing 5^th and 6^th, so maybe they’re the team to pick if they keep progressing. 

On the team side, Red Bull is the highest scoring team in real life, and since they lead Fantasy world in points-per-dollar, just maybe they are priced right. One interesting note though, is that while Red Bull leads the Fantasy pack, they are very closely followed by the cheaper McLaren team. If my driver budget had been a bit more I could have taken McLaren over Red Bull and not given up too much in the team department. In the worldwide F1 Fantasy standings, my best team is currently placed 299,500th out of 921,700 contestants, so let’s call that the top 33%. In all the USA players, I’m on 26,900th place from 88,500 or so players, about the top 30%. No danger of winning any prizes then!