Here at Fantasy GP HQ we have clear values – the game is built and run by Formula 1 fans, for other Formula 1 fans to enjoy and get more out of their favourite sport.

Updated – to clarify, for those IT minded folks, our hosting and infrastructure is more than capable – we’ve always gone for more than we need in terms of power and capacity. The issue this weekend was caused by a third-party tool that we use as part of the site and recent updates to this tool caused errors – then the high load compounded these errors and caused a snowballing effect which blew everything out of proportion and caused us massive headaches and ultimately downtime.

In conclusion

When we first realised the issue wasn’t going to be resolved before qualifying on Saturday we offered a Google form for people to complete predictions. Over 900 entries were made in minutes. Realising this wasn’t suitable for everyone and the issues were ongoing, the game was opened up at 4pm BST and left open for players to submit predictions and team changes until midday Sunday.

We’ve now completed a massive data manipulation and entry exercise to compile Google form submissions and predictions made on the site so players have the best version of their predictions in the game for the Portuguese GP weekend and these have now been used for calculating the scores.

Due to the timing, all players have Bottas for Pole and score 10pts for that. Which is nice.

Going forward

We have been working on upgrades to the game engine since January, our biggest upgrade in years with a lot of tuning and refactoring of code to bring the best game experience yet. Our aim was to have this ready for 2022, but we’re now looking to bring this forward and release by the mid-point of 2021, if not sooner. These upgrades will help ensure the game is as reliable and fast as it’s known for over the last decade of being around.

We’ve removed the third-party tool that was causing our issues this weekend and so, unless anything else is causing issues, we should be good for the Spanish Grand Prix weekend and in the future.

And finally

From all of us here at Fantasy GP HQ we wanted to say thank you to all those who have been patient and understanding during this situation – we’ve seen so many nice comments via our social channels, so yes, thank you and here’s to a more trouble-free remainder of the 2021 Fantasy GP season!