It’s been over a week since Abu Dhabi and it is hard to say that the dust has truly settled following the end of a fantastic season and an extraordinary finish under the lights of the Yas Marina circuit. However, given the decision of Mercedes to withdraw their appeal, we can truly bring down the curtain on Fantasy GP. Let’s have a quick look at what happened across the players, drivers and teams.

Firstly, a big congratulations to our World Champion, David Ogburn and his outfit, Virginia Tifosi. He romped to victory with a stonking 3,634.5 points, 47.5 points ahead of the second-placed team, Mixin Cem Racing (Chris Knowles), with Champions (Chris Logan) coming a commendable third, even if the name didn’t quite fit!

David has chosen the iconic Mansell & Senna Taxi from Paul Oz as his main prize as well as receiving some BoxBoxBoxCo goodies along with our other podium finishers in the PRO league.

Super League winners (ignoring our own Pro Championship) was Press Play Productions, with their top 5 Pro players clocking up an impressive 19,440 points.

In driver terms, the Fantasy GP battle was far less dramatic than on-track. Verstappen’s 698 points put him 107 points ahead of Hamilton. A far more recognisable gap then existed to Bottas (386) and Perez (374) who finished third and fourth respectively, highlighting again how much of a two-horse race this season was! Best of the rest was again won by Sainz (368) ahead of Norris (333) in sixth-place.

At the lower end, even a bargain price didn’t offer value for Mazepin, with a dismal 66 points accrued, leaving him the third-worst value driver, with 18.86 points accrued per million spent (based on his finishing price of $3.5m). Leclerc and Ocon were the worst value, albeit they notched up an average of 199 points each more than the Russian’s “spinning” debut season!

Speaking of value, Tsunoda’s finishing value of $3.5m perhaps over-egged his value at 43.14 per million spent. Schumacher was the second-best and undoubtedly an important component of many winning fantasy teams, with 37 points for each million spent, for an impressive haul of 185 points in a dismal Haas car. If you need an example of why value picks matter, don’t look further than the Bottas (20.86) and Perez (19.18) as the 14th and 17th in value respectively. Money better put toward a top tier purchase or perhaps saved to spend on an improved selection of teams.

Bonus points were perhaps surprisingly topped by Perez with 174, with Sainz on 159 and Raikkonen with 156 in his last season before retirement. At the other end of affairs, Gasly’s perhaps evidences the disparency between AlphaTauri’s qualifying performance on a Saturday as opposed to a Sunday, with a pitiful 33 points. Hamilton was perhaps a surprising third-worst with Brazil being the biggest contributor to a lowly 63 points, albeit in a dominant car. Russell, in his last season with William’s before stepping up to partner Hamilton, was also someone that suffered between a Saturday to a Sunday, with 85 points perhaps not mirroring his full potential.

Verstappen was a qualifying monster in 2021, with a massive 210 points gained through pole positions and complete dominance over his teammate, Perez. Tsunoda was at the other end of the scale, with only 5 points gained from qualifying all year. A strong end to the season will have buoyed his hopes for a better campaign in 2022!

In terms of teams, Red Bull reversed the Constructor’s result, beating Mercedes by just 11 points, with 678 compared to the latter’s 667. Ferrari (400) beat McLaren (352) with Alpine (227) being the best of the rest. Red Bull topped the value charts again with 27.12 points per million spent on their finishing price. McLaren managed to top Ferrari here though, with 25.14 against 24.24! Alfa Romeo represented the worst value at 13.86, their lack of race points counting heavily against them at a hefty $7m of your hard-earned budget.

That rounds up the headline statistics for 2021. We’ll chuck these and some more on the Fantasy GP Twitter account over the winter break alongside some things to watch for 2022!