When designing the DNF pick category for our fantasy racing mobile app Open Wheelers, I included an option that felt generous: pick None. If you believe nobody will retire from the race, select None and collect 2 points if you're right. Otherwise, pick a specific driver you think will be among the first three to retire, and earn 3, 2, or 1 points depending on how early they go out. We take our fantasy games seriously, I want them to be engaging and fun, and I care a lot about getting things right. So I decided to dig a bit deeper on this rule mechanic because it felt suspicious.
On the surface, None looks like the smart play. I even worried perhaps it would become the ONLY play and break the game; I thought maybe everyone would figure out that None is the no-brainer pick to beat the system. After all, modern F1 cars are absurdly reliable. Races where every car finishes make headlines now instead of being unthinkable. So why not make None your weekly lock and bank the free 2 points?
Because it's a trap. And the data proves it despite my instinct toward the opposite.
A decade of Did-Not-Finishes
I looked at every F1 race from 2016 through 2024, 190 grands prix across nine seasons. Here's the reality of how often "nobody retires" actually happens:
| Season | Races | Avg DNFs per race | Zero-DNF races |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2016 | 21 | 3.1 | 2 |
| 2017 | 20 | 3.0 | 0 |
| 2018 | 21 | 2.8 | 0 |
| 2019 | 21 | 2.6 | 1 |
| 2020 | 17 | 2.6 | 0 |
| 2021 | 22 | 2.1 | 3 |
| 2022 | 22 | 2.8 | 1 |
| 2023 | 22 | 2.3 | 3 |
| 2024 | 24 | 1.7 | 2 |
Across the entire dataset, roughly 12 out of 190 races had zero retirements. That's about 6% of the time. Put another way, if you picked None for every race across a full decade, you'd be right once every 16 races. At 2 points per victorious pick, that means a steady None pick throughout an entire season would average a grand total of 3 points per season...yikes!
The math doesn't lie
Let's compare two hypothetical players over a 24-race season like 2024:
Player A: The "None" loyalist
Picks None every single race. Correct twice. Season total: 4 points.
Player B: The student of unreliability
Studies which teams are struggling with reliability or drivers who just seem to have a knack for finding the gravel, and targets those drivers. Even with modest accuracy, hitting a top-3 DNF just 5 times across 24 races, the floor is 5 points and the ceiling is 15 points depending on whether those picks land 1st, 2nd, or 3rd out.
And 5 hits isn't ambitious. In 2023, Esteban Ocon and Logan Sargeant each retired from 7 of 22 races. In 2022, four different drivers, Zhou Guanyu, Valtteri Bottas, Carlos Sainz, and Fernando Alonso, hit 6 retirements each. If you identified any of those drivers early and kept picking them, you'd outscore None by a landslide.
But cars ARE getting more reliable
This is true, and it's the one wrinkle worth watching. F1's finishing rate has climbed steadily from about 86% in 2016 to over 91% in 2024. The sport saw its first-ever consecutive zero-DNF races to open the 2024 season in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia.
If that trend continues, and the 2026 regulations could easily reverse it, zero-DNF races might climb from 2-3 per season toward 4-5. Even at that rate, None at 2 points per hit would still max out at 8-10 points across a season, which a savvy driver picker can match by nailing just three or four retirements in the top-3 positions. It's worth noting that the opening race of 2026 had not only three DNFs but also two DNSs and one Lance Stroll driving the race effectively for test purposes since he pitted multiple times and ultimately finished with only 43 laps (the leaders did 58 laps). DNSs and turning a real race into a test are almost unheard of...so it's looking like 2026 may move us back toward the DNF mean instead of cementing a new age of reliability.
What this means for strategy
Back to the None pick, I verified it isn't the safe move. It's the passive move. It says "I don't want to think about this category." And passivity rarely wins in games with point differentials this tight.
The real edge in the DNF category comes from paying attention to things most fantasy players ignore: which teams are running new and untested power units, which drivers have a reputation for aggressive racing that invites contact, and which cars have been nursing recurring mechanical issues across practice sessions.
That's the kind of knowledge that separates pub-league champions from the field. And it's exactly the kind of informed, opinionated pick-making I built Open Wheelers around.
So go ahead and pick None if you genuinely believe every car is making it to the checkered flag. Just know that the odds are about 15-to-1 against you.
Open Wheelers is a casual F1 and IndyCar fantasy game for friends, built by Stalefish Labs.
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