The Formula 1 Driver of the Day (DOTD) award may not grant any championship points, but for F1 Fantasy it’s imperative to take this fan-voted accolade into consideration when picking your drivers. That’s because the driver who wins DOTD earns 10 F1 Fantasy points—the equivalent of finishing fifth in the Grand Prix. And as I’ve shown in my first DOTD driver analysis, the race winner is often passed over for the award. That means a driver who finishes second and earns DOTD scores more than the winner (28 vs. 25 F1 Fantasy points).
Knowing how important the award is, I decided to revisit the data to determine which teams win DOTD most often and how that should influence your F1 Fantasy gameplay.
The Big Four Teams Dominate
It’s clear that the Big Four teams of the modern era (McLaren, Mercedes, Ferrari, and Red Bull) dominate the DOTD wins. 77% of DOTD winners in the 2023 season came from those teams, and the number was even higher in 2024 at 92%. The percentage decreased a bit in 2025, to 71%, but the numbers are still disproportionately high.
Why is this the case? Well, an easy explanation is that the top teams simply get more screen time. DOTD is, at the end of the day, a fan-voted award, and the fans like what they see. Because the top four teams are most often battling it out for the big points at the top of the field, F1 will naturally spotlight them more. Additionally, the top four teams are far more likely to win the race or podium than the midfield—there are usually only 3-5 midfield podiums a year, which is when a midfield driver is most likely to win DOTD.
Does it Matter Where in the Constructors’ Championship Standings a Big Four Team Finishes?
The short answer is: no, at least not when looking at the season in its entirety. There are Big Four teams who lagged in the overall standings yet had drivers banking DOTD awards.
Take Mercedes, they were clearly the least popular of the top four teams from 2023-2025, regardless of where they finished in the championship. The only time a team had fewer DOTD wins was in 2024 when Red Bull had just one vs. three for Mercedes.
Ferrari stayed consistently popular throughout this time, even earning the same number of DOTD awards as the 2024 Constructors’ Champions (nine), indicating that it’s likely better to bet on a Ferrari driver, especially over a Mercedes one.
McLaren and Red Bull show an interesting trend about teams that actually win the Constructors’ Championship: they are much less popular the year after they win (Red Bull in 2024 and McLaren in 2025). Fans don’t like seeing domination!
What Does This Mean for Your F1 Fantasy Team This Year?
So far in 2026, every single DOTD winner has come from a Big Four team.
Kimi Antonelli’s fine form has won him 2 DOTD’s in 2026, but as we know George Russell is not a popular driver, and that has contributed to Mercedes’ lack of awards. The trend of the previous year’s Constructors’ Championship remains, with McLaren only having won twice this year: Piastri in Japan and Norris 12 races into the season at Zandvoort.
On the other hand, Max Verstappen, Lewis Hamilton, and Charles Leclerc have won multiple times so far this year, indicating that Verstappen and Ferrari’s general popularity has had staying power from 2025. In fact, Ferrari and Red Bull have been the most popular teams so far this year, winning four awards each.
As you think of who will win DOTD moving forward, leaning Leclerc and Hamilton over Piastri and Norris—or possibly a Max Verstappen differential—is the way to go. There's no silver bullet for spotting a DOTD winner, but in a season this chaotic on track, don't expect the voting to settle down either.
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