About The FGP... and Me!
Hello my name is Kevin Staden and I run the Fantasy Grand
Prix - Yes, it's all my fault!
For those who may not know me, I'm an ex-Civil Servant who
worked at the Land Registry, originally from Tunbridge Wells,
but moved to Devon in the mid 90s. I'm now retired. I'm a big
Formula One fan (that's a bit of luck then!), I'm into Rock
Music, watch a lot of film and TV, and make model railways...
This Fantasy Grand Prix competition started life as an
In-House run Office competition back in 1994 at Land Registry Computer
Services in Plymouth, Devon.
Since the late nineties it has been organised and run by me.
Originally it was run via email within the office with
nothing but a 3"
floppy disk containing all the relevant information! Websites
hadn't really arrived at that point so it was mostly email and
pass the bits of paper around.
An internal (intranet) office website was written by myself,
followed by a full website so staff and family
members could view from home.
In early 2012 I took early retirement from the Land Registry.
Since then the FGP has been run as a semi-public competition
under my ownership, with anyone having a
connection to existing players invited to join in.
For it's early years all FGP teams consisted of just two
drivers and two constructors... and no transfers, if you picked
a bad team at the start, you were stuck with it! As transfers
were added, the now infamous 'Team Selector' first appeared.
This started life as a somewhat clunky executable program, but soon became
the spreadsheet version that we have today.
For many years, part of the Champions prize was a Minichamps
small replica of the winning F1 car. However, as prices rose
this came to an end with the Champion receiving all of the Prize in
cash. In recent years Land Registry Sports & Leisure (Plymouth)
have kindly provided
a yearly trophy.
In the early days the driver and car prices were taken from
'Top Gear' magazines own fantasy GP competition. When that
stopped it became a case of deciding them myself, with help from
various others, but since retiring it has become more of a one
man job, aided and abetted at times with Andy Kerslake.
Along the way, a few different ideas have come, and gone -
Tyre choices (when there were two tyre providers), bonus races, a
stand-alone driver and a system of awarding points for achieving
the 'triple' of pole, race win and fastest lap. Whilst they may
sound good, think on the fact that they all got dropped! In more
recent years F1 has introduced various forms of Sprint Races.
The FGP has awarded points for these, although this has been cut
back somewhat for 2024.
The FGP is run as a labour of love for the benefit of those
who
love a bit of Formula One, it takes a lot of time to get it into
the shape that players finally see. In fact the moment the
season ends the next seasons work begins. It takes a lot of time
throughout the season as well..... so, please be kind to the bloke who
runs it. He apologises for being a bit grumpy now and then!
Kevin Staden
January 2024
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