Red Bull dropped a bombshell with the news that for the next race onwards, Pierre Gasly has been dropped from Red Bull Racing, to be replaced by Alexander Albon.

Gasly will take up Albon’s seat at Toro Rosso, alongside previously demoted Daniil Kvyat. This is huge news and must be a massive disappointment for Gasly who’s yet to find his feet in the big team after an impressive 2018 campaign with Toro Rosso. On the flipside it’s a huge opportunity for Albon who’s done well at Toro Rosso this year, but now has huge pressure to perform alongside the team’s golden boy, Max Verstappen.

Maybe Verstappen lapping Gasly at the previous race in Hungary was maybe enough for the team to go against their previous plan to retain the Frenchman for the rest of the season. It will be fascinating to see how it all plays out in Spa for the Belgian Grand Prix onwards.

So what does this mean in Fantasy GP?

The game is structured, as real F1 with the 10 teams and 2 drivers per team. In the event of a driver being replaced, the new driver inherits the previous driver’s points, position and price. In this case with the drivers swapping, the same rule applies.

If you had Gasly in your team, you’ll now have Albon. If you had Albon, you’ll now have Gasly. They inherit each others pricing, so currently Gasly is $8million at Toro Rosso and Albon is $10million at Red Bull. Pricing will likely be revised after the Belgian GP.

In light of this extraordinary mid-season switch, all players have been given an extra change, so if you had made 6 changes so far this year, it will now show as only 5. If you haven’t made any changes, you’ll still be on 0 changes. The game is now unlocked and you can make any changes you wish. Note that penalty points, rankings and total scores will be updated following the Belgian GP.

Remember, the same switch around applies to predictions – if you already had Gasly down for a podium in your predictions, that will now show as Albon and vice versa.

Note – there has been some (understandable) annoyance with this setup from players and while we agree that it’s not ideal, this is how the game was setup for 2019. If a driver is replaced, the new driver inherits the previous drivers value and points etc. With the switch this has happened twice.

We’re looking to make this better for 2020 onwards to avoid having drivers switching and swapping causing an issue again.