F1 Fantasy Race 3: Bear Bearman, we hope you’re ok

Jason’s Hope and Depression (Current Race: 226 / 1st, Overall: 755 / 3rd)

The triple Mercedes and Ferrari structure of Antonelli, Ferrari and Hamilton/Leclerc continues to be optimal with all 4 teams using this structure outperforming the 3 teams only using two Mercedes and Ferrari assets.

Simply a great weekend to anti-differential Bearman (DNF, -14), who was owned by all 6 competitors in the Baddy League. Fantasy aside, hoping Bearman has a strong recovery as the crash looked bad.

Antonelli won the race with help from a well timed safety car for 50 points, outperforming Russell’s 27 points for the second race running. More importantly, Antonelli is now ahead of Russell in the championship. We might be heading into a similar scenario to last year with Piastri starting the season strong ahead of Norris until it fell away towards the end. Looking forward to Verstappen making a late comeback once again.

Josh’s Just in time for WW3 (Current Race: 209 / 2nd, Overall: 763 / 2nd)

An excellent transfer from Bottas (2) to Lawson (10) this race, speaking as someone who also transferred in Lawson.

I was wondering how Josh scored more points than me when we have the exact same team aside from me selecting Leclerc (31) over Hamilton (19), and then I remembered I DRS boosted Leclerc instead of Antonelli (for the Hope and Delusion).

Great minds think alike when it comes to the optimal team. I’ll see you at Miami with Hulkenberg? Hulkenberg DNF’d the first race in Australia and the score will now fall out of his price calculation heading into the fourth race in Miami. This means that he will be an excellent budget pick at $5m, only if he finishes the race at Miami.

Alternatively, Ocon might be a much safer choice with Haas and Racing Bulls still being the best budget constructors, but $9.1m feels like a much steeper price to pay.

Keven’s Cope and Delusion (Current Race: 202 / 3rd, Overall: 794 / 1st)

I gave up on my unattainable Russell, Leclerc and Ferrari line up to all my competitors in the Baddy League, standardised it by transferring Russell to Antonelli, and it paid off for an extra 23 points!

For Miami, I’m 100% transferring out Lindblad after his 1 pointer in Japan as he’s practically certain to drop in price unless he scores 13 points, equivalent to Max’s score in Japan, and I don’t fancy those odds.

Brendan’s B-Team is the A-Team (Current Race: 190 / 4th, Overall: 600 / 6th) (Wildcard)

We have a new recruit on the triple Mercedes and Ferrari team structure and Brendan proceeds to outperform all the non-conformers by 27 points to immediate success.

Even when he gets unlucky with Bearman (-14) and Haas (-4), he still pulled through with a score better than his old team.

These incremental improvements race by race has resulted in Brendan’s B team actually being better than his A team i.e. this team is doing better than his other 2 teams.

Clark’s Team (Current Race: 163 / 5th, Overall: 631 / 5th)

Clark was the first of three teams to stick with Bortoleto (3) and received a few points at the cost of $0.6m in budget. Bortoleto will likely go down another $0.6m in Miami which may be a great opportunity for those planning ahead, as Bortoleto at $5.2m would be a great bargain.

Clark may still be praying for Ferrari’s downfall, but even if McLaren and Red Bull catch up in Miami, they’re still more expensive, aside from Hadjar.

Vinny’s Jacqui’s Favourite Pole (Current Race: 159 / 6th, Overall: 561 / Last)

Vinny held Hadjar (5) through $1.8m of budget falls and will be glad that the DNF in Australia will no longer be calculated in his next price change. Hadjar is still quite expensive at $13.3m and will need to match Norris’ 24 points in Japan to go up $0.6m in price.

More importantly, Vinny has made a noble sacrifice to give up on Verstappen after the DNF to standardise his team with a double Mercedes and Ferrari team structure.

Just an overall win to make the objective decision to select Russell over Verstappen and Verstappen can always come back in a couple of weeks. Verstappen needs to match his 50 points in Australia to not fall in price, and Russell surprisingly needs 30 points, more than his 27 points in Japan, to rise another $0.3m in price. These are the cons of being priced at $28.3m compared to Antonelli’s $24.1, as more points are required to continue receiving the maximum price rise per race.

Tim’s Trolley Cart Racing (Current Race: 155 / Last, Overall: 660 / 4th)

An unfortunate weekend to the trolley carts, who I’ve realised has gone for an extremely balanced team structure. Tim has no double ups on any team with a team structure of 1 Mercedes, 1 Ferrari, 1 Red Bull, 1 Alpine, 1 Haas, 1 Audi and 1 Racing Bull.

That is quite an impressive feat when some of us have already tripled up on Racing Bulls. Tim is perfectly balanced in all areas as he is also in 4^th, right in the middle of the Baddy League.

Bless up,

Keven

Tracker

Highest Race Score (Sprint Weekend): Jason’s 402 points in Round 2: China GP

Highest Race Score (Non-Sprint Weekend): Keven’s 249 points in Round 1: Australian GP