F1 Fantasy: Piastri proves he’s the man to beat in Saudi 

Off-track in this week’s F1 Fantasy league, the young Australian also proved to be the best driver pick, accumulating 38 points, joint most with Max Verstappen, and for 5.2 million in-game dollars less! Despite his Saudi qualifying crash, Lando Norris also scored well with 36 points, as did Charles Leclerc, who picked up a season-best 25 points.

By comparison, Lewis Hamilton, Kimi Antonelli, and George Russell scored 14, 15, and 16 points each, despite costing $19.6 million or more, making them this week’s poorest team picks.

As a reminder, before we get stuck into the rest of the results. F1 Fantasy is a free-to-play online game organized by Formula 1 itself, in which you can pick a team of five drivers and two constructors to score points for you every race weekend.

Winners get real-world prizes (and more importantly bragging rights). GP247 is running its own F1 Fantasy league here. If you want to sign up, there’s still time to register.

Williams’ double-points finish may have been widely predicted by F1 Fantasy players—30% had Alex Albon, and 39% chose Carlos Sainz—but their weekend was impressive nonetheless.

Sainz, in particular, seemed to struggle in this season’s opening races. But in Jeddah, he was the team’s lead driver, even slowing down at one point to give Albon DRS. At $10.1 million, the Spaniard is no bargain, but he and his teammate scored 22 points—a decent haul.

At the end of the race, they were fighting Isack Hadjar, another man who did well in Saudi with eight points. This may seem mediocre, but at $5.7 million, he remains well-priced.

Other winners this week included Fernando Alonso. Though the two-time world champion has struggled badly this season, he fought his way up to eleventh to earn himself seven fantasy points. Teammate Lance Stroll continued his return to form with just a single point.

It may seem harsh to include them in this week’s ‘losers,’ but Haas pair Esteban Ocon and Ollie Bearman suffered a dip in form at the Saudi Grand Prix. Both cars finished in the points in Bahrain and China, but they could only manage 13th and 14th in Jeddah.

This earned them a combined 11 points, but they’re no longer the cheap F1 Fantasy drivers they once were (Bearman went up $0.6 million last week alone), so they’re losing their appeal.

KICK Sauber duo Nico Hulkenberg and Gabriel Bortoleto also failed to make an impact, picking up six fantasy points between them. Given the pace of their car, this may not sound bad. But Hulkenberg’s seventh-place finish in Australia raised hopes—and this may prove to be a season’s best result.

Lastly, Pierre Gasly and Yuki Tsunoda's first-lap crash cost both dearly in Saudi. With neither able to continue, the pair scored a painful -17 F1 Fantasy points each. At $15.8 million and $8.8 million, respectively, these two cost many teams (big time) this week.

Looking at the GP247 F1 Fantasy league, the big news this week is that we have a new leader: Zinzan’s No.1 Army. The jury’s still out on who Zinzan actually is, but the team’s selection of Piastri, Russell, Hadjar, and the Haas boys turned out to be a game-changer.

Our previous leaders, Team Papaya, aren’t far behind though, so there’s plenty still to play for—both in our fantasy league and in the wider competition. F1 takes a two-week hiatus before the next grand prix in Miami. Stick with us for all the latest news in the meantime.

If you want to sign up for the GP247 F1 Fantasy league, you can still do so here.