Feature

F1 FANTASY: The best and worst performers of 2020

Staff Writer

Samarth Kanal

22 December 2020

Seventeen races done, points tallied up, bragging rights had – but which drivers and teams scored best (or worst) in the 2020 F1 Fantasy season? We do the adding, subtracting, and other necessary arithmetic to find out the best and worst drivers from the 2020 F1 Fantasy season.

Highest scoring driver

Highest scoring driver on track, highest scoring driver in the game. Need we say more? Lewis Hamilton scored 699 F1 Fantasy points in 2020, to Max Verstappen's 457 and Valtteri Bottas's 435 points.

Hamilton's final value was $31.4m, Verstappen's $26.3m, and Bottas's $29.5m, which means that Hamilton scored 22.26 points per $1m, and was the best value driver out of the top three scorers as well!

EXCLUSIVE: The Top 10 F1 drivers of 2020 - as chosen by the drivers

Lewis Hamilton was the top scoring driver of 2020, with nearly half of all players choosing him

Lowest scoring driver

He retired from six out of 17 races this season, scoring just one World Championship point. That driver was Haas's now ex-driver Kevin Magnussen ($7.5m), who ended 2020 F1 Fantasy with just 35 points. The next-worst scorer was Magnussen's Haas team mate Romain Grosjean ($5.9m), who managed 68 points over the season, including replacement Pietro Fittipaldi's eight points.

Williams' George Russell was the third-worst performing F1 Fantasy driver with 74 points, though his season might have looked very different had he won the Sakhir Grand Prix on his sole Mercedes appearance...

Highest scoring constructors

Mercedes, unsurprisingly, scored the most points with 1,014 over the season, while the next best constructors in F1 Fantasy were Red Bull, with 699 points. Third best constructors McLaren (516 points) also finished third in the F1 Fantasy standings – and fourth-placed constructors' Racing Point (492 points) scored the fourth-most points. The lowest scoring constructors were Williams, with 177 points.

Car of Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1, after winning the race, to take his 7th World — Of course, Mercedes were the highest scoring constructors in F1 Fantasy

Most picked driver

Talk about bang for buck: Sergio Perez hovered around $10m and hoovered in 318 points over the season, having missed two races. And the Racing Point man – now bound for Red Bull – was the most picked driver with 8,026,516 picks over 17 races in total. He was also the most Turbo Driver'd racer.

The second-most popular F1 Fantasy driver was Lando Norris, and the third most popular? That was Red Bull's Max Verstappen.

Least picked driver

Curiously, Daniil Kvyat was the least popular F1 Fantasy driver with just 1,069,417 picks over the season. The AlphaTauri driver scored a solid 158 points over the season, however – more than Esteban Ocon and Sebastian Vettel. The second least popular driver was Williams' Nicholas Latifi, and the third least was Alfa Romeo's Antonio Giovinazzi.

WATCH: Daniil Kvyat's most memorable moments in F1

Perez was the most picked driver for 2020... expect his value to rise as he races for Red Bull in 2021

Biggest gain in value

Racing Point's Lance Stroll gained a whopping $2.1m over the season as players realised his and the team's potential. McLaren's Lando Norris was the second-biggest gainer, with a $1.3m swing in his favour over the season, and Mercedes' Valtteri Bottas gained $1.1m over the season.

McLaren's value went up $0.8m over the season; the biggest gain for any constructor.

Biggest drop in value

Finally, here's the dubious award for the drivers and team that faced the biggest drop in value over the season. Given how surprising this constructor's lack of performance was after pre-season testing, perhaps this statistic isn't so surprising: Ferrari lost $1.8m over the season.

Their drivers Sebastian Vettel and Charles Leclerc lost the most value out of the field – -$1.5m and -$1.0m respectively.

Hopefully in 2021, Ferrari regain their legendary form. Until then, subscribe to the F1 Fantasy end-of-season email by logging in to fantasy.formula1.com and ticking the box to opt in!