ROUND 3 · JAPANESE GRAND PRIX · SUZUKA
Well, that was quite the Sunday morning alarm call from Suzuka — assuming you managed to stay awake long enough to watch it, which at 1am Central time is no small feat. The Commissioner did not, which means he watched it on replay while eating breakfast and pretending he had strong opinions in real time. Moving on.
The Race
Young Kimi Antonelli — all 19 years and 216 days of him — is now a two-time grand prix winner and championship leader. History books, records, the lot. Meanwhile your Commissioner is still waiting to successfully parallel park a vehicle on the first attempt. Life isn't fair.
The race turned on Ollie Bearman's frightening 50G shunt at the Spoon hairpin on Lap 22. The boy walked away with bruising, which is remarkable. The Safety Car it produced, however, was the kind of divine intervention that rearranges entire fantasy league weekends, and several of our twelve managers felt that very keenly in their points totals.
Now. About Mercedes. Antonelli started from pole, got wheelspin, dropped to sixth, and still won. Meanwhile your Commissioner's 2009 Chevrolet truck — which has never once been described as a performance vehicle — would apparently have made a cleaner getaway off the line. It's a lot of silver car for a team that occasionally can't keep the wheels pointed forward when the lights go out.
And then there is George Russell. George arrived at Suzuka with every reason to be optimistic and appeared to spend the subsequent fifty-three laps with his thumb pressed firmly on what can only be described as his radio's special piss-and-moan setting. The Commissioner is British and therefore sympathetic to complaining as an art form, but George, son — there are limits. The man could find something to grumble about at his own birthday party. The Commissioner would not wish to be his next-door neighbour. The bins would never go out without a debrief.
Charles Leclerc, on the other hand, appears to have quietly mastered whatever dark art the 2026 Ferrari power unit requires. While lesser mortals were wrestling with their cars like they'd borrowed them from a stranger, Charles was dancing on the throttle with the precision of a man who has — the Commissioner suspects — secreted an extra AA battery somewhere in that cockpit just to give himself a private edge. P3 in Japan. Lewis Hamilton P6. Ferrari, quietly, are not as far away as the noise suggests.
A Brief Legal Notice · Administrative Turbulence
The Empire of the Colonies is a fantasy F1 league now entering its third decade of operation, run by a Commissioner who builds and maintains the league's custom team selection system and takes his responsibilities extremely seriously. This background is relevant to what follows.
The Commissioner is required — on advice from counsel, which is a sentence that has appeared in this column before and will doubtless appear again — to address certain allegations regarding the behaviour of the league's Team Picker system ahead of Round 3.
It has been alleged — by the league's founding member and current points leader, a gentleman of Scottish extraction and considerable enthusiasm — that the Team Picker was, and the Commissioner quotes loosely from memory as the original communications contained language unsuitable for a family publication, "rigged," "broken," "out to get him personally," and at one point "an affront to the democratic process." Umpteen text messages and numerous phone calls were involved. It has further been alleged that drivers were deleted, access was unfairly blocked, and that the entire system was orchestrated to disadvantage one specific team.
The Commissioner wishes to state, for the record and for the attention of any legal representatives currently reviewing this document, that the Team Picker operates with complete impartiality, flawless integrity, and the kind of wholesome transparency that would make a Swiss watchmaker weep with admiration.
By the time this column goes to press, all communications between the two parties are being routed exclusively through legal representation. This is not entirely without precedent in the history of this league. However, it must be recorded that we have reached the lawyers by Round 3 this season — a full two rounds earlier than the previous record. The Commissioner views this as neither an escalation nor a cause for concern. It is simply a founding member doing what founding members of twenty-plus-year fantasy leagues occasionally do: playing the long game, rattling every cage within reach, and hoping something shakes loose.
Your humble, innocent, and entirely blameless Commissioner has nothing whatsoever to fear. The system worked. The gentleman in question got his drivers. He is currently leading the league by 45 points.
Make of that what you will. The Commissioner's lawyers certainly have.
Round 3 · Japan — Points Scored
MWS Racing — 110 pts · ROUND WINNER
Luck of the Irish — 96 pts
Fasnacht FC — 89 pts
Dragonfly — 82 pts
Heads Up Racing — 78 pts
Racing Point — 77 pts
Team Bennie-tton — 74 pts
Almila Racing — 68 pts
Marks Marauders — 64 pts
Harvey Mushman — 51 pts
Wallop A Sassenach — 44 pts
Brutus Force 1 — 37 pts
Season Standings · After Round 3
Team Bennie-tton — 373 pts · LEAGUE LEADER
Fasnacht FC — 328 pts
Almila Racing — 317 pts
Racing Point — 301 pts
Harvey Mushman — 297 pts
Marks Marauders — 278 pts
MWS Racing — 263 pts
Dragonfly — 259 pts
Luck of the Irish — 200 pts
Brutus Force 1 — 189 pts
Heads Up Racing — 156 pts
Wallop A Sassenach — 104 pts
The Teams
Twelve teams. Three races down. The league leader has been first, first, and first across every round so far — consistent, clinical, and apparently willing to pursue litigation if it helps. The Commissioner takes his hat off, if not his guard.
Round 3 belonged to one team in particular. MWS Racing hauled in 110 points from Japan — best of the weekend by a considerable distance, and the kind of score that turns heads and raises eyebrows in equal measure. At the other end, Brutus Force 1 drew the short straw when two of their drivers failed to finish, the cruel lottery of Safety Cars and mechanical failures doing its worst.
Up front, the leader's advantage is 45 points over second place after three rounds. Comfortable, but not unassailable — and with Miami's sprint weekend coming up on May 1st, a single chaotic Saturday could reshuffle the entire deck.
At the back, the bottom two teams are separated by just 52 points, and both will be looking to the long break before Miami to recalibrate. The gap from last to first is 269 points, which sounds large until you remember there are nineteen rounds still to run.
The Commissioner notes, with studied neutrality, that his own team sits sixth. He is choosing to interpret this as a strategic position from which a comeback is entirely plausible. The Commissioner's lawyers have advised him to say nothing further on this point.
Next up: Round 4 — Miami Grand Prix · May 1–3. Sprint weekend format. Buckle up.
— The Commissioner, Empire of the Colonies Fantasy F1 League
(The Commissioner's legal team would like it noted that no Team Pickers were harmed in the production of this column.)