Game Guide
The full F1 Fantasy GP Game Guide. Learn about how to play, the concept of the game and rules.
Fantasy GP is fun, easy and quick to play – but tricky to win. In basic terms, you need to pick 3 drivers and 3 teams within a fixed budget. In addition, you can make predictions for each race weekend, giving you the chance to earn crucial extra points.
The start of qualifying marks the point the game “locks down” for a race weekend. Usually, this will be on a Saturday or, for a Sprint weekend, on a Friday. By this point, you must have made any team changes and, crucially, submitted your predictions.
Following each race weekend, after the results are official, points will be updated in Fantasy GP (usually well within an hour). Players can then check their scores and league rankings. All results, statistics and leagues will be updated simultaneously.
The game will remain locked until any driver or car prices have changed. At the latest, we aim to unlock the game by midday UK time on the Monday following a Grand Prix weekend.
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Qualifying Sprints Grand Prix Predictions Leagues Team Changes Pricing Stats & Data Misc & more
Qualifying
In qualifying, your drivers will be eligible to earn points for finishing in Pole Position (10 points) or beating their teammates (5 points). Pole Position is awarded to the driver who wins qualifying. Crucially, the rest of qualifying factors in any post qualifying penalties, so it is the subsequent grid (on Sunday’s race or Saturday’s Sprint) that determines the rest of the qualifying points for beating a team mate.
Example: if you have selected Oscar Piastri and he finishes qualifying in 2nd behind Max Verstappen, but Max subsequently incurs a 5-place grid penalty for an gearbox change, Oscar will inherit 1st place on the grid, but Max is still the official winner of qualifying and you’ll only get the Pole Bonus if you have Max in your team.
It is worth keeping an eye, as multiple penalties across drivers can cause carnage and allow opportunity to get big scores across a race weekend!
Sprint Races
Fantasy GP scores include any Saturday sprint races. Importantly, as outlined above, this means that the cut-off for team changes and predictions will be on Friday for sprint weekends.
As in the actual sprint format, your drivers will collect points for finishing 1st through to 8th. Also, this is where they are considered to have started from in respect of bonus points, where they will gain 2 points for each place claimed from their starting position. Teams also gain 1 bonus point for each place gained, so you may wish to give consideration to teams that excel in race conditions.
Example: if Lando Norris qualifies 13th on a Friday, gains 4 places in the sprint race, he will already have secured 8 bonus points going into Sunday’s race. If you also had McLaren as a team, you’d be looking at 12 points in total, with Sunday to come.
Drivers get an additional 5 bonus points for beating their teammate on Saturday, and teams getting 2 bonus points for one finisher, and 5 bonus points for both cars reaching the finish line.
Grand Prix (the regular race)
As with the actual race day format, drivers and teams mirror the race points in the Fantasy GP scoring. So, a winning driver and team each get 25 points, with 18 for 2nd, then 15, 12, 10, 8, 6, 4, 2… to 1 point for 10th place.
In addition, drivers accrue 2 points for each place gain from their starting position on Sunday.
Drivers also get an additional 5 bonus points for beating their teammate on Sunday, and teams getting 2 bonus points for one finisher, and 5 bonus points for both cars reaching the finish line!
Example: if you had Isaac Hadjar and Red Bull in your team, and he started Sunday’s race (on a non-sprint weekend) from 8th, but sneaked a podium place, and his teammate finished 4th, you’d be looking at a whopping 55 points for your team (broken down as 15 championship points for the driver, 15 for Red Bull as a team, 10 bonus points for the 5 places gained by the driver, 5 bonus points for the team and, finally, 5 points for beating his teammate)
Predictions
This bit is really good fun! For each race you can make your predictions for the following:
- Pole Position (10pts) – for correctly predicting the winner of qualifying (regardless of penalties)
- Podium – 10pts for the driver in the right positions (1st, 2nd or 3rd) or 5pts for the right driver in the wrong position. Combo bonus of 15pts for a clean sweep (i.e. a total of 45 points for predicting the podium in full)
- Fastest Lap – 10pts
- Safety Car Periods – 10pts (multiple choice – none, 1, 2, 3 or more)
- Themed Bonus Question – 10pts (multiple choice – three potential answers)
- Super Combo Bonus – 15pts (for predicting everything above correct – including a perfect podium)
You can change them as many times as you wish up until the point when the game locks for a race weekend.
TIP – PRO membership will enable you to rollover your predictions from one race weekend to the next, which means you’ll always have some placeholders if life gets in the way!
Leagues
All Fantasy GP players are automatically included in the World Championship, where you compete with thousands of fans from across the planet.
Players can also create and join ‘Leagues’ of their own. These are your own mini Championships where you can create your own private league to play against friends, family or colleagues.
To create your own league, go to ‘Leagues’ click to ‘Create your own league’ – give it a name and the league will be created. You can then go to Options > Show Code and share this unique code with your friends to enable them to join.
To join a league an existing league, find out the passcode from the league admin, go to Leagues, and click ‘Join a league’ then use the passcode.
Team Changes
As the season progresses, you may wish to swap drivers or cars, which can be done anytime after midday Monday following a race weekend, up until the start of the next qualifying season.
All players benefit from unlimited changes until the lockdown for the second race weekend, to allow some experimentation, and then players’ free changes allocation will be limited, as laid out below:
- Rookie & Supporters – 6 free changes per season
- PRO – 40 free changes per season
Every change over and above the allocation will cost 10 points. As you will quickly determine, these penalties can quickly add up.
Both your team page and pitwall show how many free changes you have after the previous race, so bear this in mind when making your team changes. You can make as many free changes as you like between race weekends, and the game will only take a final calculation when the game locks down for the start of qualifying. Therefore, only a maximum of six changes can ever occur, presuming you changed all teams and drivers!
Price Changes
In Fantasy GP, the price for drivers and cars can fluctuate throughout the season dependent on their Fantasy GP results. This is adjudicated by an FGP stewards panel after every race weekend and will reflect the FGP performance of the driver or team, not simply their performance relative to the official world championship.
Prices will change in increments of $0.5m and any changes are capped at a maximum of $3m per race to avoid wild swings. Canny players can potential expand their overall budget early in a season to potentially give benefit later in a campaign. Be warned though, holding a bad driver or team for price gains can give short-term pain with no guarantee of upside later down the road.
Statistics & Analysis
FGP-specific statistics and data are available for all PRO players, which allows them to see how the entire field of drivers and cars are performing for each race. You’ll have both the raw data and interactive charts to play with, allowing you to see clearly see the value of each driver and team in terms of the points scored over the cost to have them in your team!
There’s also a Stats Archive for PRO players where they can see the points scored for drivers and cars in the game since 2020.
Miscellaneous
Safety Car (“SC”) or Virtual Safety Car (“VSC”) periods are defined by when they start and finish. So, if a VSC period starts and then turns into a full SC period, with no green flag showing the resumption of racing, this is counted as one continuous period for the purpose of the prediction question.
If a race is red flagged under VSC or SC conditions and then restarted under the same, this is considered one continuous period until racing resumes (either with a grid or rolling start).
If a driver is added in by a team, replacing an existing driver, players with that driver will inherit the new driver. Drivers are not added, but replaced – i.e. if a team decide to fire a driver and bring in another, any points and results will be inherited by the new driver. If drivers are swapped between teams, you retain the “driver seat” (i.e. if you have Hadjar and he is swapped out for Lindband, you will automatically inherit Lindband).
In the event of a tie on points for a weekend where there is a prize concerned, the prize winner will be decided by usage of a random number generated for the affected parties. Also note that the winning player must have been PRO before the start of the race concerned.
Further to these statements, we reserve the right to alter rules and format as we see fit (though we will try our best to avoid this). For the avoidance of doubt, the decision of Fantasy Grand Prix is final in any misunderstanding. Appeals will be heard but those along the lines of ‘I couldn’t access the internet to change my team’ or other ‘the dog ate my homework’ type claims will be instantly dismissed.
Anyone found to be breaching the sporting regulations will face points deductions, disqualification from a race or, in severe cases, a season-long or permanent ban. We’ve only had this happen once, but be warned!