It’s the Chinese GP this weekend, round 3 of the 2019 Fantasy GP World Championship and this is when things get even more interesting. After the first 2 races, you should have an idea of the form guide and maybe have a strategy for your team too.

Team Changes

Driver/Car changes are no longer unlimited. Following Bahrain, free team changes are limited to 6 for the season for rookies, with PRO and PRO Elite players having 20 and 40 respectively. You can of course change your team as many times are you like, but every change beyond your allowance will incur a 10pt penalty, taken from your overall score.

It’s time to Go PRO! You can have a lot more fun my opting for a PRO or PRO Elite Membership with Fantasy GP. The Ad-free experience is worth it alone, and then there are prizes, interactive charts and stats, unlimited leagues and additional free changes. Plus LIVE scoring for Elite players. Don’t delay, support this independent game that’s run by proper fans of F1.

Go PRO

Changes and Penalties are calculated when race results are calculated. So you can mess with your team freely and only the changes you’ve made from race to race are counted.

TV Times

It’s another early start for most of western Europe, qualifying and the race both start at 7am BST. As usual, for those like us, in the UK it’s a Sky F1 watching the race live, do checkout the NowTV offers if you don’t have Sky though, it’s pretty good.

Channel 4 will have highlights for UK viewers at the more comfortable time of 1pm for qualifying highlights and 3pm for race highlights on Saturday and Sunday respectively.

Team Tips

So we all saw just how fast Ferrari can be at the last race in Bahrain and it’s a fairly safe assumption that Ferrari will have speed over Mercedes this weekend in China. Their engine, rumoured to be over 1000bhp, coupled with the Shanghai circuit and the long straights should see the red cars smashing lap records this weekend.

Ferrari will be fast in China – credit: Octane Photos

Mercedes and Red Bull will still be strong and it could be any combination of these top 3 on the podium come Sunday, but we are backing those red cars. Play it safe and choose Mercedes and you’re almost guaranteed at least some points in the bag.

McLaren are early leaders of the midfield battle. Haas look good for pace, but are yet to translate that into many points. Renault look decent but again, few points to show for it and the double DNF in Bahrain has seen the Fantasy GP popularity of yellow and black cars plummet ahead of this weekend.

Williams Racing – credit: Octane Photos

Williams are definitely worth having, they are no longer as cheap as they were, but they are still great value and regularly bringing home points. We’d suggest having either the Williams car or one of the Williams drivers in your team for this weekend.

The rest of the midfield is still a minefield – so close and unpredictable – it’s very exciting but makes team selection a real head scratcher. It’s more fun to put your eggs in one basket though, for it and pick your midfield team and see what happens. Or play it safe and pick a couple of different cars and drivers. Less fun, less points potential, but guaranteeing some points at least.

Prediction Tips

Much of the above applies to predictions too. But with it still being early days in the 2019 season, we wanted to remind you of the Prediction strategies you could deploy.

Fantasy GP allows you to choose the same driver for P1, P2 and P3 – yes, really! You can put Hamilton down to win, come 2nd and 3rd in the race. This is a handy tactic and if you’re sure the current champ will be on the podium you’re likely to get points.

While this may seem like a good way to get some points, you are also limiting your points potential. Put 3 different drivers down and you could get 10pts for each. We won’t judge you, either approach is valid – what will you go for?

Safety cars – so tricky to predict! 2018 saw 1 SC period, 2017 saw 2, 2016 and 2015 saw 1 each as well. Are you going to go with the trend and predict a Safety Car period or will 2019 see a clean race? 1 SC would be a fairly safe bet, Maldonado isn’t around anymore.