The first race of the 2023 Fantasy GP season is now behind us and with over 15,000 players competing this year, it’s going to be a thriller of a season. Of course, in real life, Red Bull dominated with a front row lockout and a 1-2 finish that looked almost certain from the first lap. Ferrari looked strong, but fragile with Leclerc failing to finish. Aston Martin lived up to the hype with a podium for Alonso and Stroll in a strong 6th place. It wasn’t all bad for Mercedes, but they were clearly struggling to keep up and with the front runners.

The midfield looks like a good race this season, Alpine, Williams, Alpha Tauri and Alfa Romeo all looked fairly well matched, Haas could be there too. It was a race to forget for McLaren, but never write them off, all teams have bad weekends and tricky cars at times, we’re sure they’ll be back in the thick of it.

How Did YOU do?

You can check your results now and make changes to your team, swapping out any cars or drivers to get your team ready for Round 2. Remember, it’s unlimited Team Changes for everyone until the game locks for Round 2. So use this time wisely, have a read over the debrief below from Bahrain. After Round 2, Team Changes will be limited to 6, 15 or 40 (depending on if you’re a Rookie or Plus, Pro or Pro Elite player)

If you didn’t do so well in Round 1, don’t worry – it’s far from over. With 23 races this year, one bad race won’t be the end of it. Dig deep, read on below and get back up the order for Round 2 and beyond!

The Drivers

In Fantasy GP terms, Verstappen was the top scoring driver – his Pole Position and Victory gave him a total of 45points (25 for the win, 5 for beating his team mate in the race, 5 for beating his team mate in qualifying and 10pts bonus for the Pole Position). Behind Verstappen though, it was more of a mixed bag – the next highest scoring drivers were Alonso and Gasly. Alonso isn’t much of a surprise, P3 in the race, beat his team mate in the race and qualifying and moved up a couple of places from the start to the finish. Gasly started last in the race, but by finishing 9th he bagged 2 points and then a further 27 bonus points (more than any other driver) due to him rising from 20th to finish 9th (11 places, 2pts per place, 22 bonus points) and of course beating his team mate Ocon who spent much of the race in the pit lane serving penalties.

The Cars

For the cars, it’s no surprise to see Red Bull, Aston Martin and Mercedes as the top 3 cars, of course Aston Martin were the best value, being significantly cheaper than Red Bull and Mercedes. Beyond these three it was pretty much even scores, with Alpine, Ferrari (15 pts each), Williams with 14pts and then Alfa Romeo and Alpha Tauri (13pts each). Haas and McLaren didn’t do so great, but Haas were unlucky. McLaren is more doubtful, but keep an eye on them, they won’t frequent last place for long.

The Winning Teams

For the first round we had 4 teams scoring the top score of 265pts (one of these 4, Shaun in Somerset) was picked by our random selector to claim the Scalextric Grand Prix prize. How did they get this score? Having Verstappen and Alonso as drivers along with Albon gave them 45, 29 and 21 pts respectively and then having the cars of Red Bull, Aston Martin and Williams gave them 48, 32 and 15pts. That’s an impressive total of 95pts for the drivers, 95pts for the cars too (190pts for their team) and then the other 75pts came from predictions – a correct podium (10pts for each place and then 15 bonus point for getting all three gives 45pts) plus 3 of the other 4 predictions being correct gave another 30pts. Nicely played.

Stats & Data

If you’re a Pro or Pro Elite Player you can see the full interactive stats for Bahrain now in the Stats Dashboard – this will help with analysing all the performances for the first race and beyond. If you’re not a Pro or Elite Player, consider going Pro here.

The Ultimate Team

For the Bahrain Fantasy Grand Prix, the ultimate team would have been the below (the same as what our winners had) plus a full set of correct predictions – with the podium, fastest lap, pole position, safety cars and bonus prediction all correct – so the highest possible score would have been a whopping 290pts.

• Cars: Red Bull, Aston Martin, Williams
• Drivers: Verstappen, Alonso, Albon
• Total spent: $79.5m

This team brought in 190pts. A full set of correct predictions would being in a further 100pts. 7 correct predictions at 10pts each, plus 15 combo bonus for a correct podium and 15 further combo bonus points for a perfect set.