Week One

(For anyone that is here for the first time, the introduction post is below this one if you are on the blog front-page (which you probably are), and here if not.)

(** I am afraid newcomers have missed the first week cut-off but there is a higher-than-usual minimum-points allowance for Week One, so please join us for Week Two. The entry-post should be up around Monday and I will e-mail you a reminder the day before the deadline if you leave a comment **)

Introduction

The competition kicks off with the Monte Carlo Rally. Pick seven drivers (the maximum for one event) and leave them in the comments. Future weekly posts will include score-tables for the previous weekend and overall standings but obviously not this one. Do consider the points regime here in the rules, and bear in mind avoiding bad results across the season is as important if not more important than getting good ones. Beware the early deadline. I will normally (if I remember) send out reminder e-mails to regular players still to enter for the week on deadline day, but obviously I do not yet know who you will be. Thus I will try to do this for last year’s players plus any new ones I am aware of, so if you are planning to play but do not have your entry ready, leave a comment. There is a special offer on minimum score this week, 99% of the lowest full entry instead of the usual 90%, so it is not as bad as it could be to miss this week, but try not to.

It is very easy to put off entering until the last evening, and then just to forget. Sometimes in a busy week I used to put in a placeholder entry that I spent a couple of minutes on, knowing I could change it later when I had more time, but at least I would have an entry if I forgot.

If you do amend your entry, I would prefer you provide another full list, copy-and-paste the original and amend it, rather than just tell me about which driver(s) you are dropping and replacing with whom. It is easiest for me if your last entry-comment has all the line-up rather than having to extract the information from the amendment-comment and the previous entry. I will still accept the change otherwise, but cooperation on this would be appreciated. The last entry made before the deadline will be accepted.

The rules and schedule pages can be found at the top of the sidebar.

Monte Carlo Rally

Because the first Super-Specials are on Wednesday, the deadline will be extra early, being 0600 hrs GMT on Wednesday 18th January (about midnight Tuesday night ET). Two particular rules to note. Overall results only count, not class-position. Also, because it is such a pain to go back through stage-results to perhaps establish a retired car did finish with a point or two, the rule for WRC is if they do not finish they do not score.

The official entry-list is on this page, it being necessary to click the “Engagés 2012″ tab. However, below is the main part of the entry-list including all the WRC-class entries and Ogier in the S2000-class. I would imagine most would pick from these. I have no idea why Dani Sordo is down as Daniel Sordo Castillo.

1	CITROEN TOTAL WRT	LOEB Sébastien	CITROEN DS 3	WRC
2	CITROEN TOTAL WRT	HIRVONEN Mikko	CITROEN DS 3	WRC
3	FORD WRT	LATVALA Jari-Matti	FORD FIESTA	WRC
4	FORD WRT	SOLBERG Petter	FORD FIESTA	WRC
5	M-SPORT FORD WRT	TANAK Ott	FORD FIESTA	WRC
6	M-SPORT FORD WRT	NOVIKOV Evgeny	FORD FIESTA	WRC
8	M-SPORT FORD WRT	DELECOUR François	FORD FIESTA	WRC
9	WILSON Matthew	WILSON Matthew	FORD FIESTA	WRC
10	SOLBERG Henning	SOLBERG Henning	FORD FIESTA	WRC
12	ARMINDO ARAUJO WRT	ARAUJO Armindo	MINI COOPER	WRC
14	PALMEIRINHA RALLY	NOBRE Paulo	MINI COOPER	WRC
21	CZECH FORD NATIONAL TEAM	PROKOP Martin	FORD FIESTA	WRC
37	MINI WRC TEAM	SORDO CASTILLO Daniel	MINI COOPER	WRC
52	MINI WRC TEAM	CAMPANA Pierre	MINI COOPER	WRC
11	VAN MERKSTEIJN MOTORSPORT	VAN MERKSTEIJN Peter	CITROEN DS3	WRC
23	CITROEN JUNIOR WRT	NEUVILLE Thierry	CITROEN DS3	WRC
38	MAURIN Julien	MAURIN Julien	FORD FIESTA	WRC
15	VOLKSWAGEN MOTORSPORT	OGIER Sébastien	SKODA FABIA S2000	2

Guide

All the early game-weeks including this one are difficult to call, with two WRC winter-rounds, the car-breaking Rolex 24 of Daytona, and two NASCAR-only weekends. A big part of my strategy for this period will be crossing my fingers that nothing too bad happens.

This event is tricky as the last tarmac/snow WRC event was the 2008 Monte Carlo Rally. That was won by Sebastian Loeb (who has won every tarmac event going back for years, except for an engine failure last year in France) over Mikko Hirvonen. The spectators at this event have been known to move snow onto the road to make things more exciting.

Hirvonen has moved from Ford to Citroën. Sébastien Ogier will be driving a Skoda in a lower class having signed to join the VW WRC team planned for 2013, so his strong results last season would be best ignored. This year, Mini, run by Prodrive, have become a full-time manufacturer team; Dani Sordo was very competitive on tarmac events in the car. Ex-World Champion, Petter Solberg after some years as a privateer has been promoted to a works drive with Ford. Mathew Wilson has gone the opposite direction now in a self-entered Ford after being dropped by the M-Sport team his father runs – I wonder if that made for a happy family Christmas?

I think just picking the top runners with the top teams from last year (but probably not Ogier), then filling out with drivers that look safe to usually deliver a reasonable result, perhaps leaning towards tarmac results from last year, is about the best approach. After the obvious choices, this will be a stab in the dark for all of us.

The dark horse might be François Delecour, who has been given a one-off top drive by Ford. I presume they have a good reason for doing this, but it may be to do with his being French. He had a bit of WRC success in his time, won the Monte Carlo in 1994, and finished fifth last year under IRC rules. The other wildcard might be Ogier, surely favourite to win the secondary class, but if he does how high that will put him in the overall standings is questionable.

2008 Standing Monte Carlo result in left-column.

2011 Monte Carlo result Run as IRC event.

2011 Standing Germany, France and Spain were tarmac events.