RADIO
Formula 1 is in Austin this weekend for the United States Grand Prix. Max Verstappen comes into this race having won the past two races at COTA, while Lewis Hamilton has five career wins here. The only other COTA winner in this field is Valtteri Bottas, the 2019 winner.
We had a Sprint race on Saturday. Verstappen won the pole for it and then dominated the race, leading the whole way to take the eight points. Not that the points matter at this point for Verstappen, as he's already clinched the driver's title.
Below you will find our Formula 1 DraftKings DFS lineup picks for the United States Grand Prix on 10/22/23, with the slate locking at 3:00 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 ($12,300)
Starts First
Formula 1 has been to COTA 10 times. All 10 of those races have been won by a driver starting on the front row. If that logic holds, this is a race between Charles Leclerc and Lando Norris. And by that logic, I'd mess around with lineups that feature both drivers as my captain. Leclerc's my official pick here because he outperformed Norris in the Sprint and is also a decent bit cheaper, but both are major threats to be the second non-Red Bull winner of the season.
Constructor: Alpine F1 Team ($3,700)
Last race at Qatar, I was high on Alpine because both of their drivers started in the top 10. Only one of the two drivers was able to finish there, but both cars showed speed, with Esteban Ocon finishing seventh and Pierre Gasly in 12th.
We're now at three consecutive races where at least one Alpine car has finished in the points, which includes the Japanese Grand Prix, where both cars did. If you're looking to pay down at Constructor this weekend, Alpine's got more upside than all the other cheap constructors have.
Max Verstappen ($16,000)
Starts Sixth
If his final qualifying lap hadn't been deleted because of track limits, we'd likely be looking at another race where Max Verstappen dominates from the pole. Instead, there's a little bit of a challenge for him on Sunday as he starts back on the third row.
As I mentioned in the Leclerc section above, every COTA winner has come from the first row. This is a track where passing tends to be difficult. But if someone's ever going to win from beyond the second starting spot, it's Verstappen this weekend. He's been the fastest driver since the cars hit the track and has won the past two United States Grand Prix. Verstappen should also earn points for place differential this weekend.
Lewis Hamilton ($8,800)
Starts Third
Lewis Hamilton has historically been really good at this track, and we got to see some of that on Saturday in the Sprint race. After starting third, Hamilton got past Charles Leclerc at the exit of Turn 1 to take second spot. He'd maintain that place.
It's been a long time since Lewis Hamilton won a Formula 1 race. 2022 was the first year in his F1 career that he didn't win a race. He's on his way to making it two years in a row right now. If there's a race for him to turn that around, it's Sunday in Austin though, as Hamilton starts third and is three spots on the grid ahead of Verstappen.
Esteban Ocon ($4,800)
Starts Eighth
If you're playing Alpine, why not go all in by stacking with an Alpine driver? Like with my recommendation of building lineups with both Leclerc and Norris as captains, I'd recommend some lineups with Esteban Ocon and some with Pierre Gasly. I recommend Ocon here though because he's $1,200 cheaper than Gasly and has finished better in two straight races. Gasly did better in Saturday's Sprint though, so again—really consider this to be more of a recommendation to play one of the two, not a recommendation for one in particular.
Valtteri Bottas ($4,400)
Starts 13th
We've talked about the other two former USGP winners in this field, so we might as well talk about the other one. Valtteri Bottas starts one spot behind teammate Zhou Guanyu on Sunday, but I expect Bottas to be the better of the two. He's finished ahead of Zhou in six of the last eight races and the exceptions were two races where he failed to finish. He's earned points in the last two races that he did finish, including tying his season-best in Qatar with an eighth-place run.
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