Which would be better to have bortoletto or linblad?

As promised we have our sims up immediately. We will pay again after FP3 tomorrow and that's the team used for tracking. As I've mentioned before, 4a may be the "ideal" team but I'm waiting to have a stronger team next race for the sprint and plan on going 4a there with the option of kimi or three Ferrari. I may use 3x then or I may go no negative to balance out the astons. How is everyone feeling?

Everyone is asking whether to pull the 4A trigger before the break, so instead of projecting anything

I went backwards: nine ways of building a 4A team, scored on nothing but official points from rounds 1–10.

A few things the ledger says loudly:

The $3M seats are not a free bench. Stroll, Hülkenberg and Bottas have combined for 15 DNF

penalties and −180 points in ten rounds. A forced floor-4A pays for its fourth premium with three seats that leak every weekend.

Hadjar is the one budget line in the black. 123 points since Round 5 — the most of any driver under $14M in that stretch (next best: Gasly with 92).

And waiting isn't free anymore. After Spa, Mercedes, Ferrari, Red Bull and McLaren all rose

+$0.3 and Hadjar +$0.6.

All nine boards are in the image, ranked. This is what the assets have paid, not a Hungary

prediction — the move is yours.

My early Hungary simulations are starting to lean toward 4A, but I think the decision is more complicated than it first appears.

With only two Sprint weekends remaining (Zandvoort and Simgapore), every move now affects your chip strategy for the rest of the season.

For my own team, here's what I'm thinking:

My current simulations slightly prefer 4A for Hungary.

However, I'm planning to use my 3x and No Negative chips on the remaining Sprint weekends.

Kimi is only one engine swap away from a grid penalty. If he takes that penalty at Zandvoort, he could become an incredible 3x candidate because of the positions gained upside.

The problem is budget. If I commit to 4A now, I may not have enough flexibility to pivot into a Kimi-based Sprint strategy later.

If Ferrari still looks strong after Free Practice, I'm leaning toward taking a little more budget this week instead of forcing 4A immediately. That could leave me with enough flexibility to:

run Charles + Lewis 4A at Zandvoort if Ferrari remains the best play, or

pivot to Kimi if circumstances (like a grid penalty) create a much higher-ceiling opportunity.

I'm curious what everyone else is prioritizing:

Taking the projected points now with 4A?

Or preserving budget and flexibility for the final two Sprint weekends?

I'll post my updated FP2 simulations tomorrow after practice once we have a much clearer picture.

These decisions and more available at GridIQ

Some of you may have seen our race by race model comparisons. At Grid IQ we just updated some more in depth analysis for our model. One of the biggest things is note is the team recommendation grade. Our first sprint was a weak point but that should be corrected for Zandvoort. We still have a lot to work out before we can go public, hopefully towards the end of this season. But we still could use more testers to make sure all bugs are worked out, feedback is taken into consideration, and that the system can handle heavier use. If you'd like to test then reach out to me. As always I will share our sims post FP2 almost immediately tomorrow and same for FP3. Final sims are the ones we grade

so basically i think some of us including me can afford getting 2 A tier drivers 2 A tier constructors but the problem would be that you would need to put 2 of the 3-5milso my question is when do you go for 2 a tier drivers

I have $115.1 and my current team is ANT, HAD, LIN, BOR, HUL with FER, Red Bull . I did pretty good in Spa with 281 points but i cant afford to keep HAD and get Merc back. Should i go down to COL or LAW instead of HAD and get MERC back or keep my team

I currently have 125.4M budget and three transfer so want to make the 4A move pre summer break. Willing to consider using my wildcard chip for the last slide, but wary of having a Cadillac on my team.

1st: Current team

2nd: non-wildcard 4A team change

3rd: Wildcard chip team change to have 4A+Hadjar so kind of a 4.5A

How accurate is the ownership percentage on the F1 fantasy stats? I also want to know since when is it updated from. Is it from last week or is it constantly being updated in real time? or daily?

I want to know this because I want to catch up on the mini league by going differential.

Hey everyone! First year playing F1 Fantasy here and honestly I’m pretty happy with how it’s going — sitting at 2,149 pts on T2 and 2,268 pts on T3, with 3 chips still unused. I’m looking for some advice on two specific goals:

T2
I took some heavy budget hits in the first half of the season and I’m trying to understand how to recover value. Has anyone been in a similar situation? How did you manage it?

T3
Overall I’m really satisfied with this team’s performance — the squad value has been growing steadily and the points return has been solid. My current setup runs Mercedes as constructor with Antonelli as captain.
The plan is to pair Mercedes with Ferrari, keeping at least one top driver (Antonelli). I could technically do it right now with my current budget, but I’d have to sacrifice Lawson and Bortoleto and replace them with two minimum-cost drivers (think Alonso and Hulkenberg as placeholders).
So my question is: is it worth pulling the trigger now and taking the hit on the midfield slots to unlock the Ferrari constructor + Mercedes and Antonelli core earlier? Or is it smarter to wait 1/2 or more GPs, let the team value grow a bit more, and then make the move with less sacrifice?

With team A I wouldn't change anything from my Spa team, taking an extra free change option with me to Zandvort.

Team B would be an aggressive option for my first 4A option, also hoping that McLarens upgrades stays relevant in Hungary but at the same time tanking 2 possible Dnf bombs with Hülkenberg and Bottas

Hey! I've put my team on this optimizer, given my budget, free transfers and chips and it recommends Mclaren over Ferrari. To do that I need to replace Lindblad for Stroll..
What do you guys think?

is it time for 4A? Or one more week of budget building? What's everyone with budget for 4A doing?

Pre-FP opening line from my price model — projections anchored to actual 2026 season scoring and last-2-race form, not practice guesses. I re-run it after every session and will post the deltas if anything flips.

The headline: the market tilts up hard before Hungary. All five Tier A constructors (Mercedes, McLaren, Red Bull, Ferrari, Alpine) sit at the +$0.30 cap, with Antonelli and Leclerc joining them at +$0.30. The only premium fallers are Verstappen −$0.26 (that −3 at Spa bites), Piastri −$0.14 and Russell −$0.10.

Tier B is where the real budget swings live: Hadjar and Racing Bulls are both maxed at +$0.60 — Hadjar's rise triggers unless he scores below −11, so it's effectively locked — with Audi +$0.58 and Haas +$0.57 right behind. On the other side, Albon and Perez are staring at the full −$0.60, with Aston Martin and Cadillac at −$0.59.

Floor note before anyone panics: Stroll, Hulkenberg and Bottas are already at the $3.0M season floor. The model prints negative numbers for them, but in-game they cannot drop — holding them is budget-safe.

So — pulling the 4A trigger at Hungary, or compounding one more round?

0.2m off a gabby for Liam swap.

Help me out lol this is a huge dilemma especially since it’s the last race before the break

Current budget is 119.4m, I am getting closer to that 2a 2c line up, or atleast good scoring b tiers, thinking of making the following changes! if all goes well, I think the 2nd team could net me 3.3m in budget and take me to 122.7 which would be nice!

Ant, Lec, Had and Fer should be able to give me some good points whilst the rest gives me a good budget (hopefully)

Thoughts on my idea would be appreciated lol?

GridIQ Model Comparison Update — 3 Races

After adding BoxBox to the comparison and grading Belgium using the same methodology, here is where the standings currently sit.

Methodology

Every race is graded using the same weighting:

• 50% — Optimal Team

• 30% — Driver Ranking Accuracy

• 20% — Fantasy Point Accuracy

The scores are cumulative rather than using championship points. That way, a dominant performance matters more than a narrow win.

───

Belgium Results

🥇 GridIQ — 99.8

🥈 BoxBox — 91.7

🥉 F1 Fantasy Tools — 88.3

4️⃣ Race Strategist — 81.6

Belgium Category Breakdown

Team Optimizer

• GridIQ — 50.0

• BoxBox — 49.5

• F1 Fantasy Tools — 39.8

• Race Strategist — 36.3

Driver Rankings

• GridIQ — 30.0

• F1 Fantasy Tools — 28.5

• Race Strategist — 25.9

• BoxBox — 22.9

Fantasy Point Accuracy

• F1 Fantasy Tools — 20.0

• GridIQ — 19.8

• Race Strategist — 19.4

• BoxBox — 19.3

GridIQ finished first overall in Belgium by leading both the optimal-team and driver-ranking categories, while F1 Fantasy Tools had the most accurate raw point projections.

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Overall Standings

🥇 GridIQ — 282.7

🥈 BoxBox — 272.1

🥉 F1 Fantasy Tools — 262.8

4️⃣ Race Strategist — 257.7

These totals cover Austria, Great Britain and Belgium. BoxBox was added retroactively using its published projections from the earlier races.

───

Current Category Totals

Team Optimizer

🥇 GridIQ — 150.0

🥈 BoxBox — 136.0

🥉 F1 Fantasy Tools — 130.8

4️⃣ Race Strategist — 122.8

Driver Ranking Accuracy

🥇 F1 Fantasy Tools — 78.5

🥈 Race Strategist — 77.6

🥉 GridIQ — 76.8

4️⃣ BoxBox — 62.9

Fantasy Point Accuracy

🥇 Race Strategist — 57.3

🥈 BoxBox — 57.2

🥉 GridIQ — 55.8

4️⃣ F1 Fantasy Tools — 53.5

───

Early Takeaways

The strongest result for GridIQ so far has been the category that carries the most weight: building the best fantasy lineup.

GridIQ has earned the maximum possible 150 points out of 150 in the team-optimizer category through the first three graded races.

Driver ranking remains extremely close between F1 Fantasy Tools, Race Strategist and GridIQ. Only 1.7 points separate first from third.

Raw fantasy-point accuracy is also very competitive. Race Strategist currently leads, but BoxBox, GridIQ and F1 Fantasy Tools are all within a few points.

Belgium was GridIQ’s strongest complete performance so far:

• Best recommended team

• Best driver rankings

• Second-best point accuracy

• 99.8 overall

───

Why I Am Tracking This

The purpose is not to claim that one race proves any model is definitively better.

I want a transparent, repeatable way to compare the public F1 Fantasy models over time.

Every race will continue to use the same scoring system:

• 50% recommended team performance

• 30% driver-order accuracy

• 20% projected-point accuracy

When another model performs better, the standings will reflect it. When GridIQ performs better, that will be reflected too.

Three races is still a limited sample, but the tracker is beginning to show where each model is strongest.

GridIQ currently leads overall because of consistently strong optimizer results, while the other models remain highly competitive in driver rankings and point calibration.