RADIO
Formula 1 is back in action on Sunday with the first of three races this season in the United States. The series will be back for COTA in October and Vegas in November, but first up we have the Miami Grand Prix.
Last time the series was on track was on April 21, when F1 ran the Chinese Grand Prix for the first time since before the COVID-19 pandemic. As a surprise to no one, Max Verstappen dominated that race. That win means he's now won every Grand Prix on the current F1 schedule except one—Singapore. He'll get his shot at that in November.
Below you will find our Formula 1 DraftKings DFS lineup picks for the Miami Grand Prix on 5/5/24, 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.
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: Nico Hulkenberg ($7,200)
Starts Ninth
Let's get weird in Miami by captaining the best driver for the only American team in Formula 1.
This isn't just about American bias. It's also because Nico Hulkenberg has shown speed this weekend. Hulkenberg came from 10th on the grid in the Sprint on Saturday to finish seventh in the Sprint itself, while his Haas teammate Kevin Magnussen was way back in 18th.
Maximized our saturday in Miami today! 💪🏼😎 Scored points in the @F1 Sprint and made it again to Q3 in the Quali. Hungry for more tmrw! #MiamiGP #F1 pic.twitter.com/FZ6TKouqTs
— Nico Hülkenberg (@HulkHulkenberg) May 5, 2024
Hulkenberg is set to move to Audi next season, but I don't think Haas sees Magnussen as a big enough part of their future to suddenly view him as the team's top driver. Hulkenberg has been the top Haas driver in four consecutive starts.
Constructor: RB F1 Team ($3,200)
We're being a little punty at both Captain and Constructor this week, so feel free to diversify some and play someone like Ferrari or Mercedes here. I think this has a chance to be a good race for RB this week, though it would have been better had Daniel Ricciardo qualified better. Ricciardo was impressive all weekend, qualifying fourth for the Sprint and then maintaining that spot through the race on Saturday. Then, he failed to get out of Q1, relegating him to an 18th-place starting spot.
Meanwhile, Yuki Tsunoda will start 10th on Sunday and was also 10th in the Sprint. If he can maintain his spot and Ricciardo can roll through the field and show that Saturday's speed wasn't a fluke, this could wind up being RB's best race so far this season. Ricciardo's poor qualifying effort is why I didn't write up an RB driver this week because I'm torn on which I feel best about earning the "defeated teammate" points. You can probably sprinkle both into your lineups.
Max Verstappen ($17,000)
Starts First
It's going to be hard to win if you don't have Max Verstappen in your lineup since he's almost certainly going to win this race as long as he doesn't crash or suffer a mechanical failure.
Verstappen has four wins in five races this season. He'd led 45 or more laps in each win and his fewest DraftKings points in those wins so far have been 36 points, twice. He did have a mechanical failure in Australia that saw him score negative fantasy points, but that's a pretty big outlier.
Very happy that we extracted the most out of today with a sprint race win and pole for Sunday's race 👊 @redbullracing. Thanks to all the fans here in Miami 🌴 pic.twitter.com/3c3ddpCM7V
— Max Verstappen (@Max33Verstappen) May 4, 2024
Last year in the Miami Grand Prix, Verstappen started just ninth but managed to quickly work his way to the front, taking the lead for the first time on Lap 20. He went on to lead 36 laps and defeat teammate Sergio Perez by a little over five seconds. On Saturday, Verstappen won the Sprint race here by 3.3 seconds over Charles Leclerc.
Charles Leclerc ($10,000)
Starts Second
Charles Leclerc has been consistently strong all season, finishing fourth or better in all five races this season. The only real surprise has been that he's only finished ahead of teammate Carlos Sainz Jr. in two of the five races...and in fact, one of those was a race Sainz missed due to illness, with Oliver Bearman in the car that week.
The point is, Leclerc hasn't been Ferrari's best driver so far this year, but I think that's mostly a fluke. You can make a great argument that at worst he's the third-best driver in Formula 1 after Verstappen and maybe Lewis Hamilton, if you believe that Hamilton hasn't slipped skillwise from his heyday.
Leclerc was just seventh at Miami last year, but he finished as the runner-up to Verstappen in the 2022 running of this race.
George Russell ($8,200)
Starts Seventh
With Lewis Hamilton set to depart from Mercedes at the end of the season, it's become pretty clear that the team is prioritizing the future and focusing on putting George Russell in the best position it can. The No. 63 car has finished as the top Mercedes in all five races this season. Even at the Australian Grand Prix when he crashed out, the crash came after Hamilton suffered an engine failure.
P7 was the maximum today. Excited for the race tomorrow☀️ pic.twitter.com/hLSyqdNbxw
— George Russell (@GeorgeRussell63) May 4, 2024
Russell starts one spot above Hamilton on Sunday. In the Sprint, both Mercedes cars struggled, but I trust the team to mostly get things figured out for Sunday's race. Russell's not one of the elite options, but if you go big money at Captain or Constructor, he's a solid play to pair with those higher-priced options.
Esteban Ocon ($3,200)
Starts 13th
Alpine looks to be improving incrementally at this point. The team still isn't close to where it was a few years ago, but some of the speed's back, with the Alpine cars qualifying 12th and 13th this week.
This could put one of the drivers in a position to actually earn points this week if some of the cars ahead of them have issues. Esteban Ocon is the clearer option of the two after beating Gasly in four of five races so far, but I think you can also take a shot at Gasly for $1,000 cheaper to help with roster building, depending on how the rest of your build looks.
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