Welcome all to Week Seventeen. It is a two-event week, with DTM at Brands Hatch, and MotoGP at Le Mans. Please pick ten drivers/riders, no more than seven in one event, in a comment on this post before 6 AM BST Friday 18th May (1 AM ET) (essentially late Thursday night).
Scores
Results – Top Tens
| Formula 1 | ALMS | NASCAR | |||
| Barcelona | Legana Seca | Darlington | |||
| 1 | Maldonado | #6 Muscle Milk | Johnson | ||
| 2 | Alonso | #95 Level 5 | Hamlin | ||
| 3 | Räikkönen | #05 CORE | Stewart | ||
| 4 | Grosjean | #9 RSR | Kyle B. | ||
| 5 | Kobayashi | #06 CORE | Truex | ||
| 6 | Vettel | #5 Muscle Milk | Kenseth | ||
| 7 | Rosberg | #8 Merchant | Edwards | ||
| 8 | Hamilton | #52 Mathiasen | Kahne | ||
| 9 | Button | #4 Corvette | Ambrose | ||
| 10 | Hulkenberg | #3 Corvette | Logano |
What the hell is happening in Formula One? Williams successfully battling Ferrari for victory with neither Red Bull or McLaren in the top-five was not on the cards. Webber finished 11th. Schumacher (24th) crashed with Senna.
The Muscle Milk Pickett P1 car ran away with the six-hour race at Leguna Seca, winning by three laps. The Dyson Lola struggled to stay ahead of the P2-cars, then received a two-and-a-half minute penalty for passing the safety-car, before other problems resulted in 23rd. The #37 Conquest Morgan had electrical problems (20th). The #055 Level 5 P2-car had its race ruined when Montagny collided with a PC-backmarker (29th). There were two other P2-cars in the race that did not appear on the provided entry-list, neither featuring. The HPDs of Muscle Milk in P1 and Level 5 in P2 were impressively fast.
Johnson used the right fuel strategy to deliver Hendrick’s much-anticipated 200th win. Biffle spent most of the race looking good for better, but faded to 12th with his set-up not suiting changes in track-conditions. Keselowski languished down the field for a long time, but used the cautions of the second half of the race to get back on the lead lap and recover to 15th. Until about halfway, Jeff Gordon was racing for the top-ten, until two left-rear punctures in quick succession led to the car being taken behind the wall to completely fail to find any cause (35th).
Player Scores
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You might want to try full-screen (F11), or click here to open table as an image in a new window. |
Non-entries get 214 according to the 90% rule.
Congratulations indeed to Pat for a fine win of twenty points over the field by being the bravest with NASCAR. This is Patrick’s second outright win of the season (plus a joint win). The rest of us were less successful in dodging the bullets, and commiserations to those hit by more of the bad luck in what was a decidedly tricky week.
With even the usually very reliable Dyson failing, the ALMS was poor pickings for points. Formula One was a somewhat jumbled result, whilst the favourites (except Gordon) had a much better set of results between them than would have been expected for Darlington, thus that an even split in picks between just F1 and NASCAR looks the way to have gone, but would have only been wise with the benefit of hindsight.
Leaderboard
| Pos | Pre | +/- | Name | Prior | Wk 17 | Total | Differences | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | Jackie | 3614 | 263 | 3877 | 0 | - | |
| 2 | 2 | Sebastian | 3565 | 252 | 3817 | 60 | 60 | |
| 3 | 6 | +3 | Pat W. | 3499 | 297 | 3796 | 81 | 21 |
| 4 | 4 | Chris W. | 3516 | 277 | 3793 | 84 | 3 | |
| 5 | 3 | -2 | Maverick | 3524 | 267 | 3791 | 86 | 2 |
| 6 | 5 | -1 | RubberGoat | 3501 | 271 | 3772 | 105 | 19 |
| 7 | 7 | Drewe | 3465 | 239 | 3704 | 173 | 68 | |
| 8 | 8 | iomracer | 3379 | 238 | 3617 | 260 | 87 | |
| 9 | 9 | The Speedgeek | 3316 | 214 | 3530 | 347 | 87 | |
| 10 | 10 | Matt | 3210 | 214 | 3424 | 453 | 106 | |
| 11 | 11 | Ryan | 2968 | 214 | 3182 | 695 | 242 | |
| 12 | 12 | Jay | 2754 | 214 | 2968 | 909 | 214 | |
| 13 | 13 | James | 2685 | 214 | 2899 | 978 | 69 | |
| 14 | 14 | New players | 2666 | 214 | 2880 | 997 | 19 | |
Jackie not only keeps the top position for a fifth consecutive week, but increases her lead by eleven to sixty. Bearing in mind there have only been fifteen scoring weeks, that is a very impressive four-point average.
Pat’s win on the week saw him over-take RubberGoat, Maverick and Chris for third. Chris retained fourth by edging back past Maverick (whom he lost a position to last week), with Maverick unfortunately losing two positions despite a respectable week.
It is only two events this week, and both obvious enough to avoid much variance I would think, but several busy weeks follow when many points will be won and lost.
This Week
Roster
· MotoGP – Le Mans, France
· DTM – Brands Hatch, GB
The deadline is 6 AM BST Friday 18th May (1 AM ET). Also remember the countdown widget rounds up on days.
Pick ten drivers/riders to a maximum of seven from 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.
Could have throttled Montagny – the two best P2 cars should have been good for 3rd and 4th while I thought one of the P1s would expire to improve that further.
If we’re going to have duplications, I’ll get in there first I think…
MotoGP
Stoner
Lorenzo
Pedrosa
Dovizioso
Crutchlow
Bautista
DTM
Paffett
Green
Spengler
Ekström
Still can’t believe nobody picked the F1 winner. Seems so obvious now. ;o)
Credit to Chris, he did at least initially pick a Williams driver (the wrong one admittedly)
Comment by maverickpf — May 14, 2012 @ 10:38 pm
ery surprised to still be at the top of the board after a mediocre week, especially as I forgot to pick Alonso. Well done to Pat on another excellent score.
I feel this weeks picks are a bit like “countdown” I’ll have two from the top one from the middle… they are really just straight out of the links Sebastian has provided and I guess there won’t be many differences between players.
DTM
Paffett
Spengler
Green
Ekström
Farfus (bit of a wildcard entry)
MotoGP
Stoner
Lorenzo
Pedrosa
Crutchlow
Dovizioso
Comment by Jackie (@SaltireF1) — May 15, 2012 @ 9:13 pm
A cool, the twitter sign in thing seems to work
Comment by Jackie (@SaltireF1) — May 15, 2012 @ 9:15 pm
No wonder I can’t catch up with jackie! ;-D
Comment by maverickpf — May 15, 2012 @ 9:31 pm
It looks like the variation amongst us is going to be at the botton end of the MotoGP boys… here’s my 10:
MotoGP:
Casey Stoner
Jorge Lorenzo
Dani Pedrosa
Cal Crutchlow
Andrea Dovizioso
Alvardo Bautista
DTM:
Gary Paffett
Mike Rockenfeller
Timo Scheider
Jamie Green
Comment by iomracer — May 16, 2012 @ 4:40 am
Decent week. No surprising picks for me this time…
MotoGP:
1) Stoner
2) Lorenzo
3) Pedrosa
4) Crutchlow
5) Dovizioso
DTM:
6) Paffett
7) Green
8) Ekstrom
9) Scheider
10) Prialux
Comment by rubbergoat — May 16, 2012 @ 1:14 pm
I picked these very quickly, then spent ages checking the results-data, but could not find any good reason for any changes. I have picked the MotoGP riders that have taken all the top-five results this season, and the DTM drivers I expect between them to take most the top-five places, and probably get top-tens if not. Tomczyck is the worry, as of the DTM drivers I have not picked, his taking the win would surprise me least, but he has not really done enough this season to justify kicking out one of my other choices to include him. Rockenfeller is the only other driver to win a race in the last couple of seasons. A couple of the new drivers are a worry but I tend to wait to see how such drivers do before picking them. (I am still kicking myself over picking Barrichello for the first Indycar race. My rule is always make picks that if they do badly I can assure myself I had solid reasons for chosing them, which in that case I did not.)
MotoGP:
Casey Stoner
Jorge Lorenzo
Dani Pedrosa
Andrea Dovizioso
Carl Crutchlow
DTM:
Gary Paffett
Jamie Green
Timo Scheider
Mattias Ekström
Bruno Spengler
Comment by Sebastian X — May 16, 2012 @ 5:47 pm
Ok… back on the horse. Glad to have a good week as I’ve not been doing well recently. Fundamentals… reliability is key, not potential winners.
MotoGP:
Stoner
Lorenzo
Pedrosa
Dovizioso
Crutchlow
Bautista
DTM:
Paffett
Green
Ekstrom
Scheider
Comment by Chris W — May 16, 2012 @ 6:08 pm
Well that’s more like it! I like the accompanying jump in positions. I think MotoGP almost picks itself so the gamble is DTM. I see a lot of people are going for the 6/4 split, something I nearly did and may revisit tomorrow.
MotoGP
Stoner
Lorenzo
Pedrosa
Dovizioso
Crutchlow
DTM
Paffett
Spengler
Ekstrom
Green
Rockenfeller
Comment by Pat W — May 17, 2012 @ 12:45 am
I think the main variation this week will be the order we write the names in…
Comment by maverickpf — May 17, 2012 @ 12:30 pm
MotoGP
Lorenzo
Stoner
Pedrosa
Spies
Dovizioso
Crutchlow
DTM
Ekstrom
Spengler
Paffett
Green
Comment by Matt — May 17, 2012 @ 6:29 pm
Will Stoner’s decision to retire affect his race performance this weekend? I remember before Mika Hakkinen retired he seemed to lack motivation, same with DC. I suppose it could go either way, leave on top form or start to go backwards.
Comment by Jackie (@SaltireF1) — May 17, 2012 @ 7:04 pm
He is only 26! Hakkinen still gets bad headaches when he exercises from his big accident in Australia. I think it took a huge amount out of him in 1998/9 to overcome driving through this, and his motivation wore out for his last year (it came and went). I think with DC, his abilities faded somewhat sharply towards the end, and the drop in motivation leading to retirement followed. Stoner seems to be in a bit of a sulk. I have a suspicion he will do an Alan Jones, find he misses it and make a comeback. Jones won the last race before his first retirement.
Comment by Sebastian X — May 17, 2012 @ 8:09 pm
Well, another week and I am behind in all the news. Gotta get this work thing under control! My results last week showed for it (and as the only person to put a bet on Schumey….)
MotoGP
Stoner
Lorenzo
Pedrosa
Spies
Dovizioso
Crutchlow
DTM (I still haven’t watched a single race, so, guessing)
Green
Paffett
Ekstrom
Scheider
Hoping for a better week!
Comment by Drewe — May 17, 2012 @ 10:48 pm
With DTM, there is very little to gain by watching races, either in information garnered (German commentary does not help), or entertainment value. There is also remarkably little news. About the only thing I learnt keeping an eye on both races so far is that there was more over-taking than usual at Hockenheim, but probably because the track-configuration was more condusive to passing than most the venues they visit. Results are the about the best information we have.
Comment by Sebastian X — May 17, 2012 @ 11:17 pm
DTM:
Jamie Green
Bruno Spengler
Gary Paffett
Timo Scheider
Matthias Eckstrom
MotoGP:
Casey Stoner
Jorge Lorenzo
Dani Pedrosa
Nicky Hayden
Cal Crutchlow
Comment by The Speedgeek — May 18, 2012 @ 4:37 am
Having seen the practice times for the DTM today with Tomczyk at the top, i am now really wishing I picked him. I heavily considered him instead of Green or Crutchlow. I have a feeling things will be more mixed with the MotoGP this weekend.
Great to see Matt and The Speedgeek back. I was worried we might be losing more players and I would end up playing on my own by the end of the season!
No duplications. We all picked Stoner/Lorenzo/Pedrosa/Crutchlow/Paffet/Green. We all have at least seven in common with each other player, mostly eight or nine. I prepared the guide for next week, Monaco, Indianapolis, Coca-Cola 600, Acropolis Rally, and that is going to be a mother of a difficult week to call. The first two are about the most difficult to predict of the F1 and Indycar seasons, and the third is about the least predictable of the Sprint Cup intermediate tracks. It is going to be a big week I expect.
Comment by Sebastian X — May 19, 2012 @ 12:45 am
Should we have already made our Indianapolis picks by the way?
Comment by Mav — May 19, 2012 @ 9:30 pm