GP Clash Rules

Welcome to GP Clash, the Formula 1 fantasy game you play weekend after weekend. Here are all the rules, explained simply — use the index to jump straight to the section you care about. Season 2026.

1. How to play

In GP Clash you're the team principal of your own outfit. The game runs on a simple loop that repeats every Grand Prix:

• You join a private league with your friends.
• You build your roster of drivers and a constructor, buying them at auction or on the market.
• Every weekend you set your lineup and pick a captain.
• You earn points based on real F1 results (qualifying, race, sprint).
• You face a league rival in a head-to-head duel.
• During the race you play live actions and grow your team with upgrades and sponsors.

In short: build, field, play the race, win the duel.

2. Leagues

• Leagues are private: you join with an invite code.
• A league can have up to 11 members. Whoever creates it is the admin.
• Each league is tied to a season (one championship year).
• Every manager starts with an initial credit budget (usually 100, set by the league admin).

The wallet

Credits are the game's currency, and every movement is tracked in your wallet, with the amount, the reason, and the balance after the operation.

• You spend credits at auctions and on trade adjustments.
• You earn credits from sponsors and from any admin adjustments.

3. Your Roster

Your roster is made of drivers and one constructor. How many drivers you can own depends on how many of you are in the league:

• The constructor is always 1, in every league.
• Every driver and constructor is exclusive: if it's on your roster, nobody else in the league can have it.
• Drivers have no fixed role: each weekend you decide who starts, who goes to the academy and who is captain.

4. The Market

You build and reshape your roster through the market. The market is open only during market windows, periods the admin schedules across the season. Depending on the window type you can do everything (auctions, trades and waivers), auctions only, or trades and waivers only.

There are four ways to get a driver or a constructor:

Auctions

• A manager puts a driver or constructor up for auction with an opening bid; the others bid higher.
• Each auction has a 30-minute timer: when it expires, the asset goes to the highest bidder.
• You can't bid more than your available budget: credits already committed on other auctions where you're leading stay locked.
• You can lead as many auctions as you have free slots on your roster. If someone outbids you, the slot frees up and you can nominate elsewhere.

Example: in an 8-member league you own at most 2 drivers. If you already have 1, you can be the top bidder on only one driver auction at a time.

Trades and waivers

• Trade: you propose an asset swap to another manager, optionally with a credit adjustment. The proposal expires after 7 days. Both rosters must remain valid after the trade.
• Waiver: you claim a free asset for free. If several managers want it, whoever asked first wins.

5. The Lineup

Before each GP you set your lineup. You need:

• 1 or 2 starting drivers
• 0, 1 or 2 academy drivers
• 1 captain (must be one of the starters)
• 1 constructor

The rules to remember:

• The total drivers you field (starters + academy) can't exceed the maximum number of drivers you own.
• The captain scores ×2. An academy driver scores ×0.5.
• If you field a single starter, that driver is automatically the captain.
• You confirm the lineup before the deadline (usually just before qualifying). After that it's locked: no more changes.

Example: in a 10-member league you own 2 drivers. Your options are "2 starters" or "1 starter + 1 academy".

Why put a driver in the academy? They score less, but they recover energy: it's the main move to rest tired drivers (see below).

6. Driver Energy and Fatigue

Drivers get tired. And the most expensive ones tire sooner: you can't field your stars every single weekend — sooner or later they have to rest. That's what keeps the season alive and stops a single manager from dominating by fielding the same names every weekend.

How long a driver lasts

When you buy a driver, they get a fatigue threshold based on what you paid: the more they cost, the sooner they tire.

Verstappen bought for 55 credits has to be rotated every 3 races. A driver picked up on waivers can run half a season without stopping.

How it rises and falls

At the end of each weekend, every driver changes based on how you used them:

When a driver hits their threshold they're fatigued: you can't field them as a starter or captain until they recover. To rest them you put them in the academy (slow recovery, but still scores) or on the bench (faster recovery, no points). Every driver shows an Energy percentage: 100% is fresh, 0% needs rest.

Example: you field Verstappen (threshold 3) as captain for two races in a row. By the third he's fatigued: you have to put him in the academy or on the bench to recover. Albon (threshold 8), on the other hand, you can field race after race. Whoever builds a deep roster beats whoever has only two stars.

7. Scoring

Points come from real F1 results and update live throughout the weekend.

Race — points by position:

Sprint: 8 · 7 · 6 · 5 · 4 · 3 · 2 · 1 points from 1st to 8th (0 from 9th on). Qualifying: 5 · 4 · 3 points to the top three. Sprint qualifying: 3 · 2 · 1 to the top three.

Bonuses and penalties:

Constructor: scores the sum of the race points of its two real drivers. Multipliers: Captain ×2 · Starter ×1 · Academy ×0.5.

8. Live Actions

During the race you can play along with the action using live actions.

• You have 100 energy for each GP and can use at most 3 actions.
• They can be used only while the race is on; spent energy doesn't come back.

9. Car and Driver Upgrades

Upgrades are the third strategic pillar, alongside the lineup and sponsors. You invest credits to upgrade your car and your drivers, and every weekend you decide how hard to push them. Outcomes depend on what actually happens on track: no luck involved.

Two levels of choice

• Ownership (long term): you buy components and level them up across the season.
• Tuning (each weekend): you choose how hard to push each component, before the lineup lock.

The components

There are components for the constructor and for the drivers, split by lifespan:

Every component also carries a risk: if things go wrong (a retirement, a disastrous qualifying, a penalty) it can cost you points instead of giving them.

Levels

Each component has a level from 0 to 5. The higher it is, the bigger the bonus... but also the risk: a powerful component swings more in both directions. Leveling up costs credits and is a season-long investment — maxing one out takes many weekends of sponsors.

Tuning: how hard to push

Each weekend you choose the mode of each component. This is the strategic heart of the feature:

But you have an engineering budget of about 5 points per weekend to spread around: conservative is free, balanced costs 1 and aggressive costs 2. On top of that you can push at most 2 components in aggressive per weekend. The question becomes: which two components do you bet on this Sunday?

Monaco example: you push Aerodynamics aggressive (Monaco rewards aero) and your captain's Mental Coach aggressive (2 + 2 budget points), keep the Chassis balanced (1 point): you've used your 5 points and your 2 aggressive slots. Everything else stays conservative.

Track affinity

Each component performs better on certain track types. A good manager reads the calendar and pushes the right component at the right time.

Reliability, renewal and the market

• Reliability: every component wears down, and the harder you push it the faster it wears. At zero it breaks and must be rebuilt for credits. Rotation matters here too: you can't keep everything aggressive forever.
• Renewal: seasonal and short-term components must be renewed before they expire, otherwise they lapse and you lose their levels.
• Market: when you sell or trade a driver or constructor, its components travel with it: a "developed" asset is worth more.
• Move components around: you can detach a component from one asset and reattach it to another asset of the same kind you own (car → car, driver → driver), for free.

10. Sponsors

A sponsor is a contract you apply to your team for a single weekend. If you hit its objectives, it pays you in credits; if you don't, it simply expires with no penalty. It's the main way to grow your budget across the season.

How they work

• You apply up to 3 sponsors per weekend, before the lineup lock.
• The catalog is curated by the GP Clash staff (league admins don't create them). Some are only available in certain parts of the season.
• Each sponsor has a credit reward and one or more objectives.

Objective types

Heads up: objectives that target the captain only count if your captain is a driver. If you make the constructor your captain, that objective fails.

Example (Brazilian GP): you apply three sponsors — +60 cr if the constructor scores ≥ 25 points with no retirements, +35 cr if the captain finishes top 3, +20 cr for the fastest lap. Your captain finishes P2 and the constructor scores 28 points with no retirements, but nobody sets the fastest lap: you bank +95 credits (the first two sponsors), the third expires.

Sponsors are settled once, at the end of the weekend, and the credits land in your wallet right away.

11. Head-to-Head Duels

On top of the points standings, every weekend you play a 1-on-1 duel.

• The system generates the pairings automatically: each weekend you face a different league rival.
• Whoever scores more points that weekend wins. A tie is a draw.
• At stake are head-to-head standings points: 3 for a win, 1 for a draw, 0 for a loss.

12. Standings

In every league you'll find four standings:

• Overall — the sum of your fantasy points across the whole season.
• Head-to-Head — the duel points (3 / 1 / 0).
• Strategist — rewards your use of live actions, duels won and energy efficiency.
• Manager — rewards your market moves: gains, roster value, return per credit spent.

Global Standings (worldwide)

There's also a ranking that compares every player across every league. To be fair it doesn't add up league points (leagues use different settings): it recalculates every lineup with standard rules and measures you by percentile — that is, how well you placed against everyone else that weekend. The season ranking is the average of your percentiles. If you play in several leagues, only your best lineup of each weekend counts. You can view the season or single-weekend ranking, and filter by country.

13. The Lights-Out Game

Before each Grand Prix you can challenge the world in a reaction mini-game at the lights-out.

• About 15 minutes before the race the lobby opens; you can see who from your league has joined.
• Shortly after, the 5 lights come on one at a time, stay lit for a random moment, then go out together: tap the screen as fast as you can.
• One tap per session. If you tap before the lights go out it's a jump-start: disqualified. Impossibly fast taps (under 80 milliseconds) are discarded.
• There's a worldwide ranking for each GP, measured in milliseconds, and it's fair across different connections: reflexes are what count, not your line speed. There's also a practice mode always available to shave down your record.

For now it's a matter of pride: no credits at stake, just the glory of the leaderboard.

14. The Race Weekend

A GP weekend runs in phases, in order:

Free practice → Qualifying → (Sprint, if scheduled) → Race → Final results.

• Lineups lock before qualifying.
• Live actions are used during the race.
• At the end of the weekend points are calculated, duels decided and sponsors settled.

Throughout the weekend you get push notifications for the important events (market, lineup to confirm, Safety Car, results, ranking milestones) and you watch auctions, scores and duels update in real time.

At a glance

GP Clash — you don't just watch the race, you play it.