RADIO
The greatest day in motorsports gets started on Sunday morning with the Monaco Grand Prix. This is a race where the starting position is huge, as the streets of Monaco don't allow for a lot of passing. The last time a driver won here while starting worse than third was way back in 1996. There isn't a ton of movement through the field either. Last year, only one driver who started in the top 10 finished outside the top 10, and that was Yuki Tsunoda. The driver who replaced him in the top 10 was Oscar Piastri, who started 11th.
In fact, half of the drivers in the top 10 finished exactly where they started. For that reason, we're fading Max Verstappen this weekend. With the points leader starting sixth, I don't expect to see him atop the podium this week, and considering he costs $15.6K and the closest driver in price is at $11.0K, we need a Verstappen win for him to make sense in fantasy.
Below you will find our Formula 1 DraftKings DFS lineup picks for the Monaco Grand Prix on 5/26/24, with the slate locking at 9:00 a.m. EDT. 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 ($15.9K)
Starts First
Can Charles Leclerc finally win his home race? He's on the pole at Monaco for the third time in his career, but he hasn't turned that top starting spot into a win yet.
Poooooole position 😘
Amazing weekend until now, we’ve got to finish it off now 🤍 pic.twitter.com/pX6M3GsJPw— Charles Leclerc (@Charles_Leclerc) May 25, 2024
In 2021, Charles Leclerc won the pole but crashed at the end of Q3. On race day, the driveshaft failed and Leclerc wasn't able to start the race. A year later, he was on pole again and led 17 laps, but ultimately a bad pit call and some confusion led to Leclerc having to wait on pit lane for teammate Carlos Sainz to finish service, which led to Leclerc dropping to fourth. He'd finish there.
Now, with Max Verstappen starting back in sixth and unlikely to be a factor, it feels like all Leclerc has to do to win this race is get a good start to clear Oscar Piastri and then just not have a disaster on pit lane.
Constructor: Mercedes ($6.4K)
I think with the nature of this race, you want a constructor that can score double points. There are three that I'm confident in: Ferrari, McLaren, and Mercedes. With Mercedes costing significantly less than the other two, they seem like the play to go with. You might not score as much as you would with McLaren and Ferrari, but it gives you the salary room to play both a Ferrari and McLaren driver.
Oscar Piastri ($9.0K)
Starts Second
Two locals on the front row. Who’d have thought? pic.twitter.com/sP5CtJ8nth
— Oscar Piastri (@OscarPiastri) May 25, 2024
While Oscar Piastri has only been the top McLaren finisher once all season, his two-spot advantage on the grid might be enough to keep him ahead of Lando Norris barring a strategy call. Even if it isn't enough, both McLaren cars should be in contention for podiums here, so potentially losing out on the "defeated teammate" points isn't the end of the world.
George Russell ($8.0K)
Starts Fifth
George Russell feels like a great mid-range option this weekend. He starts two spots ahead of teammate Lewis Hamilton and defeated Hamilton in the first five races of the season before Hamilton got the upper hand in the last two races. Russell was fifth here last year and was the only driver in the top 10 to finish more than one spot ahead of where he started, as he went from eighth to fifth.
Yuki Tsunoda ($5.4K)
Starts Eighth
Last year, Yuki Tsunoda was the only driver to start in the top 10 and not finish there. This season, he made it to Q3 at Monaco again, so the question becomes if he'll be able to maintain a spot in the points on Sunday or not. But even if he doesn't, you should be able to count on five points for beating teammate Daniel Ricciardo, who starts 13th. Tsunoda has been the top RB F1 Team driver in all but two races this season.
Pierre Gasly ($3.6K)
Starts 10th
There's just something about Alpine and Monaco. Last year, the team had a double-points finish here, with Esteban Ocon starting and finishing third while Pierre Gasly started and finished seventh. On Saturday, it looked like both teams might have the speed to start near the front again.
It didn't happen that way, as Ocon was knocked out right at the end of Q2. Gasly made it through to the final session of qualifying and will start 10th though, so there's definitely some upside here. I'd imagine one of the Alpine cars manages to finish in the points barring a crash, so I'll bet on the one that starts one spot higher and costs less in fantasy, though you can pretty easily afford to put Ocon in some lineups as well.
I'd also recommend some Alexander Albon ($4.2K) lineups. He's between Ocon and Gasly in pricing and starts ninth, pretty far ahead of teammate Logan Sargeant, who begins the race in 17th.
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