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Justin Carter's DraftKings and FanDuel DFS lineup picks for the Formula 1 Mexico City Grand Prix. Read our daily fantasy F1 advice and sleepers analysis.
Formula 1 is in Mexico City this weekend for the Mexico City Grand Prix and Ferrari looks to be in good shape heading into this race, as the team has a front-row lockout.
Last weekend, the series was in Austin for the United States Grand Prix. Lando Norris looked poised to win his first F1 race, but Max Verstappen managed to get the lead on Lap 28. From there, he led 26 of the final 29 laps to earn his 15th win of the season and the 50th of his F1 career.
Below you will find our Formula 1 DraftKings DFS lineup picks for the Mexico City Grand Prix on 10/29/23, with the slate locking at 4:00 p.m. ET. If you have any questions or want to talk about Formula 1, you can find me on Twitter at @juscarts.
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How Does Formula 1 Fantasy Work?
Here's how the scoring and format work for F1 DFS on DraftKings. You'll pick five drivers and a constructor. One of those drivers will be your captain, who earns you 1.5 times the points but also costs 1.5 times as much as they usually cost. For the constructor, you're choosing one of the F1 teams.
So here's how the scoring works. Your driver only gets points if they finish in the top 10. Here's a chart for how that breaks down:
| Finishing Spot | DraftKings Points |
|---|---|
| 1 | 25 |
| 2 | 18 |
| 3 | 15 |
| 4 | 12 |
| 5 | 10 |
| 6 | 8 |
| 7 | 6 |
| 8 | 4 |
| 9 | 2 |
| 10 | 1 |
In addition, the driver with the fastest lap of the race gets three points. You get 0.1 points per lap led, five points for beating your teammate, one point for being classified at the finish (finished 90% of the race, essentially), and points for place differential.
Finish three spots higher than your grid position and you get two points. Finish five better and you get three points. Finish 10 better to get five points. You also lose points for a negative place differential, starting at three spots.
The constructor points work the same way, with some added points if both cars do well. It's confusing, but for Formula 1 DFS to work, it probably had to be confusing. Now that we've gone over that, let's talk drivers. Here's what I've put together as a kind of base lineup.
Captain: Charles Leclerc ($13,200)
Starts First
Ferrari has a front-row lockout this weekend, with Charles Leclerc starting Sunday's race from the top spot. After winning three races last year, could this be the weekend that Leclerc gets his first victory of the 2023 season?
Probably not, if we're being honest. But he has a great shot to get a podium considering how fast this Ferrari team has been this weekend. Considering Max Verstappen, the likely winner of the race, is $24,300 to use as a captain, I'm totally fine hoping for a Leclerc runner-up finish here. He's never finished better than fourth here, but he did lead 20 laps in the 2019 Mexico City Grand Prix.
Constructor: Alfa Romeo ($3,000)
Honestly, this is kind of just a punt here to ensure we can afford multiple top drivers. Alfa Romeo's shown a little additional speed lately, and both drivers start in the top 10, so we're kind of just hoping that there's some attrition ahead of them and the two both get a good finish.
It's definitely possible. The two were 12th and 13th last week at COTA and then both scored points earlier in October in Qatar. It's been a long season for Alfa Romeo, but the team seems to have figured some things out lately.
Max Verstappen ($16,200)
Starts Third
Max Verstappen seems incapable 0f losing at this point. He's won 13 of the last 14 races this season and the only non-win in that span was in Singapore, a race where it was clear all weekend that Red Bull didn't have race-winning speed.
But Red Bull has plenty of speed this weekend, so there's no real reason to think Verstappen, who starts third, won't be able to dispatch the two Ferraris ahead of him in relatively short order. He's the clear favorite to win, but he's too expensive to really use as the captain unless you build a real boom/bust lineup.
Lewis Hamilton ($9,400)
Starts Sixth
Lewis Hamilton has run really well lately, though he ended up getting disqualified after his runner-up performance at COTA last week. Had that stuck, it would have been his third race in a row to finish in the top five and his third race in a row to finish ahead of teammate George Russell.
Speaking of Russell, after a 2022 season where it was hard to tell at times who the best Mercedes driver was, Hamilton has jumped on that title again. He's finished ahead of Russell in all but five races this season, a number that includes last week's DQ. Hamilton is currently third in points and stands a good shot of getting the second spot from Sergio Perez.
Daniel Ricciardo ($4,200)
Starts Fourth
On one hand, Daniel Ricciardo will probably end up with negative place differential points, because it's easy to imagine him losing three spots vs. his grid position. But the veteran driver starts fourth on Sunday and has a pretty good grid advantage over teammate Yuki Tsunoda, who starts 15th. Ricciardo was seventh here last year while driving for McLaren.
Valtteri Bottas ($4,000)
Starts Ninth
Valtteri Bottas scored points at Bahrain to open the season. He didn't score any again until the eighth race of the season, then again in the 14th race. He had another points finish at Qatar earlier this month when he finished eighth, then followed that up with a solid 12th place run at COTA. Bottas has shown a little speed lately, earning the defeated teammate points in back-to-back races.
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