Abu Dhabi Grand Prix Fantasy Preview

It’s crazy how sometimes the F1 season can feel like it lasts forever, and yet passes by so quickly. I wanted to get out one final column about fantasy this week, and then we will get into our post-season content after the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix in the coming days. If you’re looking for a good discussion on strategy in the final race week, the GridRival staff put out a great video featuring some Q&A earlier this week. This is just my own short spin on things that may condense things down into bite-size takeaways for this weekend. 

This week is all about maximizing points. If you’re up at the top of the leaderboards, give yourself some safety with upside. If you’re trying to climb them, go big or go home. Use different lineups than the rest of the league (GridRival has a league adoption feature, use this to your advantage).

The Front Runners

Starting with McLaren and Ferrari, Lando Norris would have had a much better result in Qatar were it not for a stop-and-go penalty, and Sainz had an unfortunate result thanks to damage.

We’ve already seen both teams lead different Free Practice sessions to this point, and McLaren looks like they are going to be particularly strong. So make sure to include Oscar Piastri in your player pool this week as well as Lando, Carlos, and Leclerc. Leclerc is looking to overcome a 10-place grid penalty for a shot at greatness and win P2 in the constructors, while Carlos is trying to put in a good final performance before heading off to Williams this offseason.

Russell seems like a strong play thanks to his qualifying pace and his consistency, and Hamilton is fine for his price point but I’m not terribly excited about the Mercedes legend this weekend. Max Verstappen is Max Verstappen, if you don’t have him in contention for a spot in your lineup when you can afford him, you probably need to rethink how you play this game.

Mid-Field and Talent Drivers

Alonso and Hulkenberg are atop my list of potential talent drivers. Aston hasn’t been particularly exciting and Hulk is coming off of a bad weekend, but I’m trusting their overall body of work with this recommendation. I can’t get behind Alpine this week despite Gasly’s recent form UNLESS I’m trying to go for broke. Then I could see myself playing Gasly and hoping for another P5.

Despite their conservative prices, I’m not going to talk myself into Zhou, Perez, or Magnussen.

Cheap Value Plays

If you need to save money and want to do something different for the heck of it, playing Jack Doohan is interesting at the low price of $6.5M. And Alex Albon is better than his price implies and has mainly fallen in value due to terrible luck. We aren’t concerned with value gain or loss moving forward, and if I’m just wanting a cheap, safe bet at points, I think Albon is a good way to go. He surely can’t have another bad luck race, right?

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