Week Ten

Welcome to Week Ten. More details below, but the quick version is that this is a three-event week, with Indycar in St Petersburg, F1 in Malaysia and NASCAR at Fontana, so please pick ten drivers (no more than seven from one event) in a comment on this post before 6 AM GMT Friday 23rd March (1 AM ET) (essentially late Thursday night).

General

For those that missed it, some have had problems leaving comments, as if WordPress recognise the e-mail address, they have been making people log-in first. Filling in a different e-mail address is one solution.

Scores

Results – Top Tens

	WEC/ALMS		F1		NASCAR
	Sebring		Melbourne		Bristol
1	#2 Audi		Button		Keselowski
2	#3 Audi		Vettel		Kenseth
3	#44 Starworks		Hamilton		Truxex
4	#055 Level 5		Webber		Bowyer
5	#24 OAK		Alonso		Vickers
6	#16 Pescarola		Kobayashi		Burton
7	#49 Pecom		Räikkönen		McMurray
8	#016 Dyson		Perez		Montoya
9	#41 Greaves		Ricciardo		Johnson
10	#21 Strakka		di Resta		Menard

Having missed the race, I am not sure how the LMP2 cars did so well at Sebring. The #1 Audi had recurring electrical problems (16th). The #22 JRM HPD was delayed by a puncture (17th). Muscle Milk were on course for third but were unable to re-fuel the car with a fuel-rig problem (28th). The #12 Rebellion also looked strong for a podium, until within the last two hours damage to the left-front caused the car to stop out on the track (32nd).

I thought it was an exciting Australian GP, suggesting a more open season than last year. A bad day for Mercedes, with Schumacher losing all drive early on (20th), and Rosberg falling back to 12th after making contact with Perez on the last lap.

Ouch, Bristol is often one of Sprint Cup’s most predictable events. Biffle finished 13th. Kasey Kahne’s early spin triggered a few cars colliding, including Kyle Busch (32nd) and Carl Edwards (39th).

Player Scores

You might want to try full-screen (F11), or click here to open table as an image in a new window.

Non-entries get 223 according to the 90% rule.

Congratulations aplenty to RubberGoat; his second consecutive win and third of the season. Well done to Maverick who did easily the best out of NASCAR, and also to Pat and Chris for 300-plus scores.

We all had the Sebring winner plus the top-two at Melbourne. The topsy-turvy fates of the petrol-LMP1 cars at Sebring, along with two of the Bristol favourites, Kyle Busch and Edwards, being both caught out by the same crash, effected almost all of us.

Leaderboard

Pos	Pre	+/-	Name	Prior	Wk 9	Total	Differences
1	3	+2	RubberGoat	1144	335	1479	0	-
2	2		Pat W.	1164	311	1475	4	4
3	1	-2	Jackie	1169	279	1448	31	27
4	5	+1	Chris W.	1139	308	1447	32	1
5	4	-1	Sebastian	1139	287	1426	53	21
6	6		Drewe	1107	287	1394	85	32
7	10	+3	Maverick	997	322	1319	160	75
8	8		The Speedgeek	1016	290	1306	173	13
9	11	+2	iomracer	985	308	1293	186	13
10	7	-3	Ryan	1039	248	1287	192	6
11	9	-2	Matt	1002	253	1255	224	32
12	12		Jay	886	223	1109	370	146
13	13		James	817	223	1040	439	69
14	14		New players	798	223	1021	458	19

Two consecutive wins has RubberGoat vault two places to become as our new leader (well done, sir), by a slim four points over Patrick. Jackie falls back two slots after a difficult week. Chris over-takes myself for fourth-place. Maverick’s strong week sees him gain three places. iomracer gains two places. Ryan and Matt lose places, both after two unlucky weeks in a row.

This Week

Roster

· Formula One – Kuala Lumpa, Malaysia
· Indycar – St Petersburg
· NASCAR – Fontana

The deadline is 6 AM GMT Friday 23rd March (1 AM hours ET). Beware that the deadline is very early on Friday so treat it as late Thursday night. Also be aware that the countdown widget rounds up on days.

Pick ten drivers to a maximum of seven in any one event.

The points system is

50-40-35-32-30-28-26-24-22-20-19-18-17-16-15-14-13-12-11-10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-2-2-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1.

Guide

The Formula One circus moves to Malaysia. It will be hot and may rain very heavily. After Australia, McLaren and Red Bull look strongest, but behind that all but the ‘new’ teams look in with a shout.

St Petersburg is a sreet-circuit. All the teams are running the new Dallara DW12. For the first time in many years there will be engine-competition, between Honda, Chevolet (Ilmor), and Lotus (Judd). If you do not feel up to speed on Indycar for this year, there is a lot of useful information on the Wikipedia page for the 2012 season. It will be interesting to see how Barrichello does with KV, a solid team. It is quite a shock to see that Newman/Haas have shut their doors, so rising star, Oriol Servià, has joined Dreyer & Reinbold, a Lotus-engined team.

Also worth a look are the times for the group-tests at Sebring. The field was split in half with two days each, and I link below to the Autosport reports for the second days for both groups. Penske and the Ganassi A-team (Franchitti/Dixon) look strong. Lotus look to be behind with their engine. I suspect the bigger-budget teams will have the engineering depth to get to grips with the new chassis quicker than others, and that engine failures will happen more frequently than recent seasons.

Fontana is a two-mile oval, and I assume will be a typical NASCAR event in that picking top-ten finishers with confidence will be difficult. The rule of thumb with NASCAR is longer ovals are less predictable.

It is the usual advice of after picking what suggest themselves as the more obvious choices, that the ten might be filled out with those considered most trustworthy to get top-ten finishes, although with so many teams in F1 looking closely competitive plus some danger of rain, a new generation of cars and engines in Indycar, plus NASCAR being NASCAR, easier said than done.

The points-system for TMRG is based approximately on that for Indycar, which makes that series’ standing more useful for reference. It is well to be aware that some drivers do better on ovals and some on non-ovals. Annoyingly, it no longer seems possible to click over on last year’s standings-page to view separately oval and non-oval results, but last season Franchitti won the main title, with Power winning the road-course title and Dixon winning the oval title.

Formula One links:

2011 Championship points-table
2012 Australia Result
2011 Malaysia Result
2010 Malaysia Result
2009 Malaysia Result

Indycar links:

Entry List (PDF – from More Front Wing site)
2012 Indycar Wikipedia page
Summary of 2011 Indycar road/street results (No longer available)
2011 Standings (You can click on buttons to view road and oval standings separately now. Might be worth making a copy of that information just in case it disappears after this first race.)
2011 St Petersburg Result*
2010 St Petersburg Result*
2009 St Petersburg Result*
(*Following the overnight launch of the new Indycar site, previous links were rendered broken, and I have replaced them with Wikipedia links. Scroll down to the race-result. Beware that the qualification result may be above that, so do not mistake that for the main result, as I have done myself in the past.)
Recent Sebring test Autosport report group one
Recent Sebring test Autosport report group two

NASCAR links:

Entry List (Page usually turns up by Tuesday.)
2011 Fontana Result
2010 Fontana Result (second visit)
2010 Fontana Result (first visit)
2011 Championship points-table without Chase
2011 Championship points-table
2012 Championship points-table
Driver stats page (Tony Stewart) (Use the ‘SELECT DRIVER’ menu towards the top-right to reach the other driver-pages (or click on their name in non-Chase points-table).)

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