F1 Fantasy: top picks & predictions for the 2024 Australian Grand Prix

Ferrari, Mercedes and McLaren are still currently squabbling for title of second best: Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz have 59 and 36 points respectively, followed by George Russell on 35 and Oscar Piastri on 33. But with all of their drivers costing north of $18m — aside from Jeddah super-sub Ollie Bearman ($15m) — you will have to focus your budget further down the running order if you’ve gone all in on Red Bull.

Williams‘ Alex Albon is current the most popular pick among F1 Fantasy players, featuring in 59% of all line-ups. But even for just $7.3m, he has only scored 6 F1 Fantasy points this season and a massive shunt during FP1 may have knocked his confidence ahead of competitive action. Similarly Daniel Ricciardo, who has been chosen by 49% of players, has also arguably underdelivered: scoring just 5 points across two grand prix weekends.

So who should make your F1 Fantasy line-up for the Australian GP? Should you gamble on someone catching Red Bull? Or will sticking with a line-up based around Verstappen, Perez or their Milton Keynes constructor — despite the exuberant cost — be worth it in the long run?

Read on for our tips and predictions for the Australian Grand prix, and don’t forget to join the Motor Sport Fantasy league.

There are more on the rules and scoring in our F1 Fantasy full guide; and if you need some creative inspiration, check out our F1 Fantasy team name generator. For more information on the chips available and when to use them, we’ve got an F1 Fantasy chips explainer too.

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Why am I so far behind in my F1 Fantasy league? 

The Motor Sport Magazine F1 Fantasy League currently contains over 90,000 players, but if you’re wondering why you’re way down in the standings even after two positive race weekends, there may be a very good reason as to why.

Top players such as Adithya Praveen and Claudia Webb have chosen to play their Limitless and Extra DRS chips to accumulate big point totals across the first two races, with the hope of building an unbridgeable gap for the rest of the season. While getting off to a fast start was mentioned as a critical aspect in the campaigns of former F1 Fantasy champions, there will be better opportunities to play these chips in the future which could amount to even bigger F1 Fantasy points totals being scored.

For example, you should save your Extra DRS Chip — which triples a drivers points scored over an entire race weekend — for races where there are more points on offer, such as in China, Miami, Austria, COTA, Brazil or Qatar which will all feature a sprint race and an extra qualifying session.

With 22 races still to come, there’s still plenty of time to close the deficit to the leaders, no matter how bad your start to the 2024 campaign has been.

How to get your F1 Fantasy team back on track in Australia

The Albert Park street circuit features an unprecedented four DRS zones and usually contains plenty of on-track chaos, meaning that midfield drivers may provide the best opportunity for you to score some surprise points via overtaking and positions gained.

Despite Alpine‘s disappointing one-lap pace, Esteban Ocon has been able to make up for it with racecraft, scoring an extra 15 F1 Fantasy points by climbing through the field and avoiding any retirements. Similarly, Kevin Magnussen and Zhou Guanyu haven’t been able to match the pace of their team-mates during qualifying but have outscored them on race day due to their ability to gradually pick off those ahead of them.

All three drivers currently cost under $9m and could be great budget picks for a budget already made limited by Red Bull assets.

2024 F1 Fantasy — most points scored from overtaking

Drivers and constructors with the most overtaking points scored so far this season, and their price changes since the last race

Even before the season began, it has been almost impossible to have Verstappen and Red Bull in your line-up, as the cost of both assets leaves you with limited funds to fill out the rest of your team. Most people have chosen to include the $30.4m Dutchman in their line-up and apply double DRS. But while doubling the points of the highest scorer is the ideal strategy in theory, you could have scored even more points by leaving Verstappen out of your line-up.

If you’d picked Verstappen and Ferrari (the second-highest scoring team) in your line-up, then applied double DRS to the Dutchman (doubling his points each race), you’d have accrued 293 points from those two picks alone. The pair currently cost $50.3m.

However, choosing Perez with double DRS and Red Bull, for a combined current cost of $50.2m would have earned you a haul of 303 points.

Although you’d have been 38 points short by choosing Perez over Verstappen, that would have been more than cancelled out by the extra 48 points earned by having Red Bull instead of Ferrari. Of course, this will only continue to pay off if Perez maintains his podium-finishing form.

While you can’t apply double DRS to a team, they do get extra points for combined qualifying position, combined race result and fastest pitstop time. Over the first two races, Red Bull has earned 36 points more than its drivers’ combined score (excluding double DRS).

Should I still include Alex Albon in my F1 Fantasy line-up?

A small mistake quickly turned into a big accident for Alex Albon during the early stages of FP1 in Melbourne, as his Williams collided with two concrete barriers. The impact significantly damaged the chassis, making it unusable for the rest of the weekend. But, controversially, Albon will still compete in FP3, qualifying and Sunday’s Grand Prix, at the wheel of Logan Sargeant’s car.

That has sidelined the unfortunate American so it’s likely that if you have him in your team, you will be given a chance to replace him with a similarly priced driver (depending on your budget) before the F1 Fantasy deadline closes at 5am on Saturday morning. But should Albon feature in your line-up at all this weekend?

As stated by team principal James Vowles, Albon is Williams’ best chance for a point-scoring weekend and has proven to be a consistent midfield runner. Before his crash in FP1, Albon had also been setting lap times which may put him in the mix for a Q3 appearance, as he finished just half a second behind tenth-placed Oscar Piastri.

But this is the second major accident that Albon has had at Albert Park in the last two years and should he wreck his team-mate’s Williams in qualifying or even on race day, it will cost F1 Fantasy players major points. With a price tag of $7.3m, your budget is probably better spent on either Nico Hulkenberg ($6.7m) or Kevin Magnussen ($7.2m).

Ferrari ✅

Ferrari has been the second-best constructor so far this season. Charles Leclerc has scored back-to-back front row starts in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, followed by a podium finish in the latter, making him the third-highest-scoring F1 Fantasy driver currently available. Meanwhile Carlos Sainz, in just one outing this season, has scored the fourth-most F1 Fantasy points of any driver with 36 points compared with Leclerc’s 59.

If you’re adopting our suggested Verstappen-less or Perez-less strategy, adding a Ferrari driver to your team looks to be a no-brainer. Leclerc scored a pole position and a race win at Melbourne in 2022 and, with Ferrari’s current form, could replicate his success in 2024 should Red Bull falter. The Monegasque driver also tipped the timesheets in FP2, setting a final lap time which was four-tenths quicker than second-placed Verstappen.

Similarly, Sainz showed great pace around Albert Park last year until a late race penalty dropped him down the running order. The Spaniard finished third in FP2, just a tenth behind the dominant Dutchman.

Either way, in its current form, Ferrari could be a great source of points this weekend, should history or its free practice pace provide any indication.

Lewis Hamilton ❌

Lewis Hamilton has struggled to get off to a fast start in his final season with Mercedes. The Briton qualified ninth in Bahrain and eighth in Jeddah, but failed to make any serious impression during the race, resulting in just 18 F1 Fantasy points scored across two race weekends. For $19.5m, this gives him a disappointing points per million value of just 0.46. That’s a third of the 1.33 points per million earned by Max Verstappen and looks even worse next to Leclerc who has so far been the best value choice, scoring 1.45 points per million, just ahead of Perez who is on 1.4.

Hamilton’s struggles may be due to the fact that he’s tried to experiment with his car set-up in an attempt to catch the front-runners. Meanwhile team-mate George Russell, adopting a different approach, has prospered. He qualified third in Bahrain and seventh in Jeddah, while scoring 35 F1 Fantasy points in total. Currently, he’s offered team owners twice as much value as Hamilton, scoring 0.91 points per $1m of value.

It seems that Hamilton has continued to experiment with his car set-up in Melbourne, and suffered through what he called “one of the worst sessions for a long” after making changes to the W15 which “massively backfired”. Even if the Briton manages to get everything sorted for FP3 and beyond, his current cost to performance output means there are much better options available. Sainz — for $0.7m less than Hamilton — has scored almost double the F1 Fantasy points from his single race.

Haas ✅

Given its backmarker reputation, Haas may seem like a strange pick to partner Red Bull as one of your chosen F1 Fantasy constructors. But for just $6.7m, the American outfit is currently the sixth highest-scoring team available.

The VF-24 has retained its fantastic one-lap pace, with Nico Hülkenberg able to drive it to Q3 in Bahrain while narrowly missing out on a top ten start in Jeddah. On race day, the German and team-mate Kevin Magnussen have been able to gain additional F1 Fantasy points due to overtakes and positions gained — something they could be able to replicate on the streets of Melbourne.

The team showed comparative pace during FP1 to other midfield teams such as Williams and RB, and similar 2023-like mayhem could result in another great point-scoring effort.

RB ❌

Despite more developmental support from its sister outfit at Red Bull, RB has perhaps been slower to start the 2024 campaign than may would have thought. It’s currently among the three lowest-scoring constructors available, and for $1.6 million more than Williams and Haas, the Faenza outfit isn’t even good value for money.

Add to that the infighting between Daniel Ricciardo and Yuki Tsunoda in Bahrain, plus the VCARB 01’s tendency to go backwards after qualifying has resulted in even fewer F1 Fantasy points scored.

It may be tempting to add Ricciardo to your line-up in the hope of him becoming a hometown hero during his first visit to Melbourne as a driver since 2022. But the pressure to perform — as applied by Helmut Marko — could force the Aussie to crack.

The team did feature inside the top ten in both Friday practice sessions, but with drivers making numerous trips to the grass, mistakes will seemingly be plentiful come race day.

What chips should I use in Melbourne? 

Much like in Bahrain and Jeddah, we wouldn’t recommend using any chips in Melbourne.

With sprint race weekends and unpredictable weather possibly in store, you’d be much better off saving your Autopilot, No Negative and Final Fix chips for later in the season. If you still have your Wildcard or Limitless chips available, we recommend saving them until after the summer break, when upgrades can often shake up the running order.