F1 Fantasy 2021 Post-Testing Line Ups
The growth we’ve seen in the discord community has been amazing, we’ve tripled in size since the end of last season so welcome to all of our new members!
I promised a blog after testing as my thoughts have developed further on team line ups and there are a number of things to consider as the season comes closer. We’ll be announcing a few new things to F1 Fantasy Tracker as well as releasing the website so stay tuned.
As always you can find us:
Discord — https://discord.gg/jVxGGTrwDG
And our private fantasy league — https://fantasy.formula1.com/league/359
My line ups
Red bull — Last year scored on average 48 points per race. Mercedes scored 59.6 per race. Albon scored 15.41 points on average last season, I expect Perez to score 20+ this season, a 5 point increase for the Red Bull team. Increasing their expected average points per race to 53. 6 points less than Mercedes but for 12.1 million less, putting them at the highest valued team for their money while scoring a tonne of points, allowing you to dedicate that 12.1 million for stronger drivers.
Verstappen — The 2nd best driver on the grid in terms of fantasy points, only hampered by a few DNFs last year. The car and him looked amazing in testing with him noting that the car feels more stable than last year, extremely positive. He’ll probably end up 2nd best this season but with a lot more points than last year in my opinion. Considering the hype behind Red Bull post testing, I expect a lot of people would have picked up the Red Bull and drivers, causing a price increase to occur at the start of the season.
Perez — If the Red Bull car is in close contention with Mercedes, then Perez is the best driver to turbo provided that he can handle the car, I think we’ve been assuming that he’ll do amazing in the car based on his experience so its something to watch out for. A good alternative is Ricciardo turbo.
Norris — Horribly undervalued, if the McLaren is better than last year this gives Norris an even better opportunity to grab more points. Even if he repeated his performance last year, he has the most points per million and I expect his price to rise very quickly. Also brings in good points which is important.
Tsunoda — After conversations evaluating his F2 performance, he could have easily been the F2 champion in his rookie season and showed real talent. The Alpha Tauri car has been notoriously kind on their drivers and I have high hopes he’ll handle it well straight away. If he really is a talent and performs well very quickly, his price will shoot up as at that point he’d be under valued.
Schumacher — Make no mistake the Haas cars will be at the back this season due to them abandoning updates to the car already. But for fantasy this is perfect. The reason why Russell was so poor fantasy wise last season was that he kept qualifying high and dropping back position in races. But in 2019 George always beat Kubica in qualifying and in the race while never beating anyone else and always picking up positions due to other drivers crashing out. At one point George averaged 11.7 points per race, that’s the same as Gasly last season. I believe Schumacher is in position to be George Russell 2019 for the fantasy game, scoring high points for a very cheap price. Which will also cause people to notice and rise his price more.
Ricciardo — I have hopes that the Mclaren car is great, I’m excited to see the performance gained with their new diffuser and the car is built upon a strong P3 WCC performance last year, Ricciardo is a talent and hes going to be a good pick this year if Perez turns out not to be one.
Leclerc — Even with the poor Ferrari car last year he put the car on podiums, so if they have managed to recover SOME of their engine performance from previous years, he’s going to score plenty of points with all his talent. Although one thing to note, if Ferrari suddenly become the 3rd best car on the grid, A LOT of the midfield will suffer with their point outputs, considering Ferrari nearly didn’t exist last season.
Giovinazzi — A dark horse of a driver, in the midst of his DNFs he had some sensational races last season, scoring plenty of points. If the Ferrari engine is better this season and he tidies up a bit, plenty of points to be had.
Bottas — He could be the P2 driver of the season, but it’s hard not to consider Max to likely take that position if he has got a stronger car this year. But a suitable replacement for Max if things go a certain way.
I think my combination of divers not only score high average points per race based on last years performances, I think they score high average points per race with the context of what we’re about to see and, especially for my first team, there's opportunity for all 6 to rise in prices significantly in my opinion.
The Numbers to Examine
Just a closer look at my first team, based on last seasons performances:
Now with how I expect things to go this season:
Plus with these picks, I expect all of them to increase in price, granting me the opportunity to swap Tsunoda out for someone even better or maybe even affording Hamilton if things go well, depending on how much prices are affected.
With 2 weeks to go, Mercedes could easily plug the holes in their car and things could be more obviously in their favour. But from our perspective there is a hope it could be competitive and fantasy wise, this looks to be one of, if not the strongest team in terms of points and price increase opportunity. Now we wait for FP3 to really understand the grid.
Good luck!
