F1 Fantasy 2022 Guide
Season 4 of the F1 Fantasy game is around the corner and this might be the best one yet. F1 Fantasy Tracker has grown massively and we’ve made changes to make sure we can keep delivering better information to you to make the best decisions in game. We’re really grateful to all the new people that joined our community last season and the amazing stuff that was produced especially within our Discord. In terms of data this year will be difficult as we’re walking into new regulations but I’ll do my best to try and articulate my thoughts to give you a guide in selecting the best teams. This blog post will cover the basics of performing well in F1 Fantasy and early predictions and thoughts but this will be followed up with a post testing blog entry too.
Topics to be covered:
- F1 Fantasy Tracker Last Season Review
- Drivers and Constructor 2022 Review
- How to Perform Well
- Gameplay Tactics and Money Making
- Team Line-Up Predictions Sheet
- Final Thoughts
There's a lot of discussion and analysis being produced at all times over in our Discord by our amazing members as well as a place to enjoy (or not enjoy) F1, I’d highly recommend joining! — https://discord.gg/Jrwyw9bKGm
A lot of important pieces of data can be found on our website — https://www.f1fantasytracker.com/ where you’ll be able to see who has the highest value, the best averages, best recent averages, the rate they beat their team mate and even track price and sentiment movements to help make more informed decisions to improve your game.
F1 Fantasy Tracker Last Season Review
With over a million players last season, we are so proud to announce that the 2021 global fantasy game winner has come from our community again, that means back to back seasons 2020 and 2021 the winner has been with us! An interview with them will follow shortly! We also again, achieved 3 others in the top 10, including P3. 1 in every 3 members achieved the top 1% with 10% of us reaching the top 0.1%. We realise that a lot of members participate in private leagues too and we have helped our users win collectively over €11,000 in cash prizes as well as other fun prizes such as merch, dinners out and eternal glory.
We also achieved 15 country league wins in countries such as (Netherlands, Great Britain, Poland, Canada, Italy, Philippines, Czech Republic, Argentina, Rwanda, Colombia, Isle of Man, Guernsey, Romania, Russia, and Iceland with a total of 32 members reaching the podium in their country in countries like the USA, Australia, Germany and China to list a few.
A massive congratulations to everyone’s success, this is amazing and helps us see the impact we have in helping others!
Drivers and Constructors 2022 Review
This season will be difficult as we have no reliable data on how the cars are going to perform in the slightest, Alpine could nail these regulations and Mercedes could easily miss the mark. However I do have a few thoughts to consider when making your decisions
How capable is that constructor in making a WCC winning car?
The teams with the facilities (such as wind tunnels and people talent) to create contending cars are Mercedes, Ferrari, Red Bull, McLaren, Alpine and possibly Williams. Through the last few seasons Ferrari and McLaren have shown exceptional ability to react and bring their cars up to speed. Mercedes have always had the jump with their engine in 2014, Red Bull have always been right up there and Alpine (formally Renault) do have the facilities to produce something good, but since 2006 have just missed the mark with each iteration (whether that’s engine based or chassis based). As we have no data to judge performance, we have to judge them on what they’ve done in history and what they physically are able to do, how well and fast they can adapt and have they shown that? In my opinion my eyes will be on Ferrari and McLaren to make a nice jump. I expect Mercedes and Red Bull to be right up the front again just because of the talent they have and I’m low-key hopeful Alpine do it right this time (el plan?, sorry.)
We always say, wait for FP3 to make any real concrete decision and even though this is true. Testing will give us a little more scope to make I’d say about 80% confident decisions but only until FP3 will we have a good idea.
Who has the best value?
I’ve produced a table below taking into account the 2021 fantasy points against the 2022 fantasy prices and measured out their value (points per million, the higher the better). This is a very loose data set as indicated above, we have no idea of the pecking order this year but it could be an indicator. I’ve included my opinions, thoughts and things to consider for each asset. Obviously this is prior to testing and prior to FP3 of the first race so take this with a pinch of salt.
How to Perform Well
There are a handful of reliable rules to follow to ensure a good performance regardless of everything else that happens in the races. You should be in good hands following these:
- Pick drivers with high average points per race — its a long season to collect points, to spot trends earlier, use our website and the last 5 races average, using this you should be able to recognise a driver who's starting to pick up on performance but it’s not being shown due to their overall average being held down by earlier performances.
- Pick drivers with high value — this is shown via the “points per million” column on our prices page, this allows you to maximise your budget more effectively. The higher the number the more undervalued and thus better the pick is.
- Always pick the “1st driver” of any team — This means picking Verstappen over Perez, Gasly over Tsunoda, Schumacher over Mazepin. Some of these are obvious from the last season but once a clear 1st driver is established, you want to collect all their “beat team mate” related points.
- Use your megadriver correctly — This is ironic as every time Max and Lewis had streaks and a sprint race lined up, they’d crashed into each other and burned all of our points (Baku and Monza…) but if you’re following the data then you’d know these opportunities were the highest point scoring opportunities in the game, not megadriving on these occasions doesn’t make much sense but it does actually help when the driver does finish the race. See our Discord for when the best races are to megadrive.
- Turbo drivers who have streaks coming up — This is the best way to maximise your points each race weekend, check out our streaks page to find out when a driver is about to complete their streaks and find out who’s lining up their next.
- Cheaper drivers might be better — It’s not about spending every penny of your budget you’ve got if a cheaper driver is better, if Albon at 7mil is better than Alonso at 12, use Albon! This will also give you spare budget if you need to upgrade another pick.
- Increase your budget — The earlier you can increase your effective budget, the better drivers you can afford sooner which can make a massive difference across the season, again this is something that is massively discussed in our discord and we collectively love to increase our budgets. In our discord we collectively pump up certain drivers together, join in to find out who’s on our radar for the moon shot
Gameplay Tactics and Money Making
Gameplay Tactics
For my 1st team I’ll be focussing on averages and maximum value. Straight away I’ll be trying to hop onto the most undervalued drivers and teams before the masses so I can hold them into my team for the longest, increasing my budget. For example Tsunoda at Race 1 out performed expectations and was amazing for price increases. I also held onto drivers like Norris way too long into the season with hopes he’d repeat earlier success, this season I’m going to try and let go on my hopes when drivers don't perform well and this is where the “last 5 race average” will come in to help. The turbo driver options last year were between Leclerc, Norris and Perez and I famously picked the wrong one every single race.
Money Making
I will post a separate blog which contains a guide from the richest player last season, Fat Ham, who has so kindly created a guide with how to make the most money in F1 Fantasy. But in the mean time the best way to generate extra money in game is to stay up to date with our sentiment page to see which drivers are rising, you swap them into your team then profit. PlayOn has done their best to try and limit how much money a team can make while using their substitutes correctly to swap drivers out for the game by capping substitutes to 3 but we’ve still managed to make maximum work out of the game while producing the best game picks still. This year I think there will be a LOT of emphasis on using your wildcard during the first race where the pecking order will be established and a lot of users will be making changes to join in the price increases, I’ll be using my WC straight away. As mentioned above, in our Discord we produce coordinated attempts to rise a drivers value so a good way to join in and stay up to date is through the Discord
Team Line-Up Predictions Sheet
Thank you to Redacted from our Discord again for the F1 Fantasy 2022 Team Picker sheet, to use this correctly, click the link below then File > Download > Microsoft Excel. This should save this locally to your computer for you to edit.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1GMAYn6rBSGi1WLmLn3EPfNp3X51JLo9D
Final Thoughts
Last year was the most competitive year of F1 Fantasy and this year will be even more so now that the regulations are here to shake up the order. I expect the Discord to be very busy over the next few months trying to react to what happens on track to perform best. A lot of the magic will come from the mid field picks and nailing that 5th drivers (Russell / Schumacher last season). Personally I’ve enjoyed F1 even more because of the Discord community we have where we’re able to talk F1, argue F1, analyse F1, help each other but most especially the memes. Special shout out to #meme-corner who keep it spicy at all times. I’m almost shilling the Discord but it really is the backbone of F1 Fantasy Tracker and it adds so much more fun to the sport, if you want to talk F1 or make friends, come join us!
We’ll be expanding our partnership with Fueler Store to help deliver the best priced F1 merchandise to you guys with community competitions to win merchandise and well as the continuation of our 10% off discount code with Fueler Store using the coupon code f1fantasytracker. Keep an eye out for flash sales and special merch releases similar to what McLaren Gulf did last season! We’re aware that a healthy amount of you readers don’t use Discord so we will be looking into an irregular newsletter to communicate good suggestions to help in the F1 Fantasy game.
This is going to be a fun season, so if you have any questions please get in touch either via Medium, Instagram or Discord. We look forward to meeting you, good luck!
