Fantasy Grand Prix 2025

The Rules

You are a Grand Prix team manager with a budget of £60 million. You have to pick a name for your team, then select two main drivers, a test driver, a chassis and an engine for each team. The test driver must be selected from the list of Test Drivers at a cost of £1m. Your main drivers may be selected from either list (but choosing two or three £1m drivers hasn’t yet been a winning strategy!). You may enter a maximum of six (6) teams. The scoring system is set out below.

Entry is open to anyone (so tell your friends about BFGP) who sees this page and submits a team or teams before midnight on THURSDAY 13th March 2025. There is no entry fee and no prize beyond the personal satisfaction that comes from being the best.

The pages listing the Main Drivers, Test Drivers, and Chassis & Engines show the cost for each together with the points they scored in 2024. I’ve provided some brief notes about each of the test drivers and the new Main Drivers. Past experience shows that the notes are only marginally better than using a blindfold and pin. Use of them is entirely at your own risk!

Use either the Web Page or the Excel Spreadsheet links to select your teams. A plain text version is available using the Text Page link.

THE WEB PAGE:

Chrome, Firefox and Edge browsers work just fine from a PC. It works just fine on my wife’s iPad and on my Andoid smart phone – but only if I use Firefox. Chrome doesn’t respond to the “Enter your teams” link. If you are entering from your phone, I suggest you send just one team as a test – just in case!

Be aware: I haven't jumped through the hoops needed to get an SSL certificate so the site will show "Not secure" in front of the URL (bfgp.uk/Rules.htm).

Click in the box labelled “Enter your name here” and do just that. From then on you can either Tab to or click on to the other boxes. You can use the up/down arrows to move to the next costlier/cheaper item available in the drop-down list. Tab or click to move to different items. This page uses Cookies to keep track of your selections between sessions so that you can sleep on your team selections before sending them to me. If your system is set to reject Cookies, you will have to complete all your selections and send them to me in one browser session. The only record you will then have of your selections will be the e-mail that the system generates – and that is NOT user-friendly. There are no other problems caused by the lack of Cookies. A basic degree of validation is performed that will prevent you sending me your team if anything is missing or it costs too much. If your team is too expensive, the ‘Cost of Team:’ will display ‘>60’.

THE SPREADSHEET:

Click on the Excel Spreadsheet link and it will ask you for a location to save it to. The first time you open it, you will get a message telling you it’s much safer to run it in read-only mode. Click on the button on the right to enable editing and you’re good to go.

You need to have Microsoft Excel 2013 (or later) or a compatible spreadsheet program on your computer. If you are running an earlier version of Excel that doesn’t recognise a .xlsx file then you must close Excel, then double-click on the file name (2025 Team Selection.xlsx by default). It will automatically convert it to .xls format and then open it as a Read-Only file with a wierd name – save it with a sensible name before you work on it (that’s the voice of experience!).

Validation is limited to telling you if the team is incomplete and a yes/no on the cost of your team. To use it, click on this link and save the spreadsheet to your hard drive. Then, after entering your teams, click on File|Share|Email|Send as Attachment, (File|Send To|Mail Recipient (as Attachment)… in Excel 2000) and fill in my email address.

THE TEXT PAGE:

Click here to open in a new window, alongside this page. It repeats the information shown on the three separate selection pages (links, top left) without the pretty formatting. Use this if you are unable to make the web page or the spreadsheet work for you. It will be your responsibility to check that you have the correct make-up for your teams and that its cost does not exceed £60million. If you cock it up (NOT unknown!), I will do my best to be helpful but there are no guarantees.

You can email me with “BFGP” in the subject line if my super-fantastic web-form goes belly-up or if you want to talk about Life, the Universe and Everything or why the answer to The Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything is 42.

All entries must be returned to me at bob.ellsmore@ntlworld.com by midnight on Thursday 13th March 2025.

THE SCORING:

Points are awarded according to the official results of each race as they stand at midnight (local time) on the night of the race.
Drivers score points for the race and the qualifying session, as set out in the scoring table.
Drivers also score 4 points for each place gained over their position in the qualifying session. No points are lost for losing places.
Drivers who do not start the race, are disqualified or are removed from the race results for any other reason score nil points.
Each engine and chassis taking part scores points on race day only as set out in the scoring table.
A finishing bonus is awarded to each Driver, Chassis & Engine classified as a finisher by the FIA thus:

Drivers 20

Chassis 10

Engines 10
Bob’s ‘Driver of the Race’ scores an extra 40 points. It’s totally subjective and is awarded to the driver who gets me jumping up and down the most. It doesn’t get awarded if the race is boring.
Sprint Races are scored at 50% of the above. Driver of the Race points will only be awarded under exceptional circumstances, such as the Brazil Sprint Race of 2021 where Lewis Hamilton started in 20th place and finished 5th. So, not very often at all.

The best possible combination in 2024 was Oscar Piastri, Daniel Ricciardo, Franco Colapinto, McLaren chassis and Mercedes engine for a score of 14422 points.