How Gridside works
What goes into each weekly email, how the call is made, and how it is checked before it is sent.
- Last updated
- 31 October 2026
What Gridside is
Gridside is a UK email advice service for the official F1 Fantasy game. Before every race weekend it sends a free weekly email with the headline call, and a £4.99 season pass adds transfer, Boost and chip advice written for your own team, budget and chips. It is not a team optimiser: each call is a written recommendation with the reasoning behind it.
There is one email per race weekend, sent before teams lock. You read it, make your changes in the game yourself, and set your Boost.
Where the data comes from
Driver and constructor prices are entered by hand from the official F1 Fantasy game after each race.
The game rules are kept in one block in our code: free transfers and the 10 point penalty, the Boost, lineup lock, and what each of the six chips does and when it unlocks. The same block is given to the writer and to the fact check, so the email is written and checked against the same rules.
Practice, Sprint and qualifying results, last race results and tyre data come from OpenF1, an unofficial community project. Weather forecasts come from MET Norway. Public news headlines are read for grid penalties and driver changes.
How the picks are made
Each email is written by Claude, an AI model made by Anthropic, from that week’s data. For a season pass holder it also uses their own team: drivers, constructors, cost cap, free transfers, Boost and the chips they have left.
The call covers three things: which transfer to make, if any, who gets the Boost, and whether to play a chip. Each one comes with the reasoning, a confidence level and a note on what would change the call. If no affordable move improves the team, the email says to make no transfer.
How every email is checked
Before anything is sent, automated checks read the finished text. They confirm that every transfer fits the team’s budget at current prices, that any number of free transfers it mentions matches the team, that every chip it recommends is one the team still has available, and that the standard Boost and the 3X Boost are never put on the same driver.
Claims are checked against the data too. A practice or qualifying result is only allowed if it appears in that weekend’s results, and a session that has not happened yet cannot be mentioned. Then a separate AI fact check compares the email with the game rules and the data.
A draft that fails is sent back once with the problems listed, rewritten and checked again from the start. If it still fails, it is not sent: a season pass holder gets the free weekly call instead, and if the free call fails, nothing goes out for that round until it has been looked at.
How often it is updated
Once per race weekend. Prices are updated after each race, and the week’s data is gathered after first practice. The email goes out before lock, which is the start of qualifying, or of Sprint qualifying on a Sprint weekend, and never within five minutes of it.
Independence and opinion
Gridside is an independent fan project. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by the official F1 Fantasy game, Formula 1, the FIA, any team or any driver.
Every call is an opinion, not a promise. Results are never guaranteed, and prices can change between our update and lock, so check them in the game before you make a transfer.