Every F1 Fantasy season begins the same way: players scramble to build the highest-scoring lineup possible under the $100M budget. It feels intuitive to chase points immediately. After all, the goal is to score as many points as possible, right?

But experienced F1 Fantasy players know that the early races are about something else entirely: building your budget.

Players who focus purely on points early in the season often find themselves trapped in the midfield of their leagues later on. Meanwhile, players who prioritize budget growth in the opening races end up with significantly more money to spend once the season settles, allowing them to field lineups that aren’t possible with a $100M cap.

Understanding how to grow your budget—and why it matters—is one of the most important long-term strategies in F1 Fantasy.

If you’re new to the game, our complete guide to F1 Fantasy in 2026 explains how scoring, transfers, and team building work before the season begins.

How F1 Fantasy price changes work

In F1 Fantasy, an asset’s price changes based on race performance. The size of the change depends on their current price:

• Drivers and constructors below $18.5M can change by up to ±$0.6M per race.
• Drivers and constructors above $18.5M can change by up to ±$0.3M per race.

This means cheaper assets have far greater potential to increase your team’s value. If a sub-$18.5M driver performs well for a few races in a row, their price can climb quickly. Over three races, that could add up to $1.8M to your budget. Multiply this across several drivers and constructors, and the effect is massive.

Last year, the top F1 Fantasy teams reached over $130M in team value by the end of the season. That extra $30M could mean the difference between having Max Verstappen or Liam Lawson in your lineup.

Why points shouldn’t be the early priority

Many players build their opening team with a simple mindset: pick the highest scoring drivers I can afford. While logical, this approach ignores the compounding advantage of team value growth.

Let’s consider two players after the first few races:

Player A: points focused

• Built a team optimized for early points
• Team value: $101.5M

Player B: budget focused

• Targeted undervalued drivers likely to increase in price
• Team value: $108M

Just a few races in, Player B has $6.5M more spending power. In F1 Fantasy, this advantage can swing dozens of points per race for the rest of the season. The result is that the player who sacrifices some early points often overtakes the field later.

Identifying early F1 Fantasy budget builders

Not every cheap driver will generate price growth. The goal is to identify assets that are undervalued relative to expected performance. One way to measure this is points-per-million (PPM), which compares a driver’s fantasy output relative to their cost.

If a driver consistently finishes in the top 10 but starts the season at around $7M-$10M, their value can rise quickly.

On the constructors’ side, only the big four teams (Ferrari, Mercedes, McLaren, and Red Bull) are priced over $18.5M. This means that a midfield team that can consistently finish best of the rest is likely to rise in value.

Finding these assets early is one of the biggest advantages in F1 Fantasy strategy.

F1 Fantasy assets to target or avoid early in the season

Based on the Barcelona shakedown and Bahrain testing sessions, we can start to judge who may rise and fall in price.

Ferrari’s F1 Fantasy price is sitting well below the other top teams. If they are able to consistently fight for podiums, their value should increase to match their competitors. The Ferrari-powered Haas and Cadillac teams are also near the bottom of the price table. Some points scoring finishes should also increase their value to reflect some of their midfield counterparts.

The difference in price between teammates Franco Colapinto ($6.2M) and Pierre Gasly ($12M) should also be noted. While Colapinto did not score any points last year, his season was slightly shorter due to his replacement of Jack Doohan after a few races. With a full season in his future and plenty of experience from last year, we could see him fighting for the same positions as Gasly. In theory, this would cause his price to grow closer to his teammates’.

Aston Martin, on the other hand, has not looked strong at all, but is somehow priced in the top three midfield teams. With the recent reports that the car won’t even be able to finish a race (which would mean -20 points for each driver), expect the value of both their constructor and driver assets to plummet.

The early-season F1 Fantasy team structure

A common early-season strategy is to dedicate four to five of your asset slots to budget growth targets:

• 1 premium driver (to apply your 2x boost to)
• 3 mid-priced drivers with growth potential
• 1 cheap driver expected to outperform their price
• 1 premium constructor
• 1 constructor with growth potential

Remember, the goal isn’t necessarily to dominate from the start—it’s to maximize the number of assets capable of building your F1 Fantasy budget. Once they increase your team value, you gain the flexibility to upgrade to higher-scoring assets.

When to switch from budget building to points scoring

Budget building doesn’t necessarily end at a certain point in the season. Instead, the best F1 Fantasy players should gradually transition from budget-building to points-scoring throughout the season. Early in the season, the focus should be on growing team value. As your budget increases and stronger assets become affordable, you can begin swapping them in while still maintaining some budget-growing assets.

F1 Fantasy is a marathon, not a sprint. With 24 races over 10 months, there is lots of time to build financial flexibility early on before transitioning to a powerful team built for points.

Players who focus on increasing their budget early gain a huge advantage later in the season.

When the championship fight heats up, the players with the biggest budgets are the ones who can afford the best drivers, the best constructors, and the most competitive lineups.