Week 6

Welcome to week 6 – three races this weekend with the first of the season for F1 and ALMS, and NASCAR again.

F1 starts in Australia, ALMS is in Florida for their opener, and NASCAR visits its first short-track, Bristol in Tennessee. I won’t go into the details – Pat has a nice summary here: http://themotorracinggame.wordpress.com/2013-guide-and-links-week-six/. As he says, very unpredictable week this week, probably best to try and avoid damaging points rather than trying to win the week. Please make your picks at: http://www.roadracetracks.com/motorracinggame.shtml.  If you have difficulty making picks through the form, please choose to leave them in a comment here at WordPress as the next best option, so that everyone can see that you made your picks before the deadline. E-mail me as a last resort. Thanks.

Scores from week 5:

WRC Mexico and NASCAR Las Vegas:

Sebastian Ogier dominated WRC Mexico in his VW Polo, finishing almost 3½ minutes clear of second place Mikko Hirvonen. Many of the top runners had problems, including Hirvonen who lost almost 2 minutes on one stage with a puncture 25k from the end of the stage. We all picked Latvala who broke his suspension 3k into the first stage, and Ostberg whose car suffered electrical failure after SS14. Chris Atkinson didn’t quite make his goal (of 5^th), and Ken was solidly inside the top 10 as expected.

In NASCAR Matt Kenseth won his 25^th career victory on his 41^st birthday, narrowly beating Kasey Kahne. Keselowski was 3^rd having started from pole position, and Kyle Busch 4^th after an apparently heroic charge through the field. Amazingly for NASCAR, all our picks finished in the top 10 with the exception of Chris’ pick of Stewart, but he finished 11^th.

Players Scores:

Congratulations to the week’s winner me! in a very close race with everyone! Only an 11 point spread between us, which is quite remarkable given that we picked 17 different drivers. So no change in the standings…

Standings:

 

Week 5

Welcome to week 5 – our first double header of the year with both WRC and NASCAR.

World Rally is in Mexico and the first gravel rally of the year, but being at high altitude it’s not considered the “real” first gravel event – that’d be the next one in Portugal. Citroen can be expected to be strong with their experience with the power sucking altitude versus Volkswagen for which it is somewhat an unknown, although they’ve done the prerequisite testing in a climate chamber. Ken Block returns for one of his few WRC outings and he has a new, faster, Fiesta. I’d expect him to have a top 10, but getting a top 5 is probably unlikely. It’s a different story for Chris Atkinson who also has his first outing this year. He’s got a one-off drive with a factory Citroen car, so he could be a real contender for a top 3, although he says top 5 is his goal. He’s historically fast in Mexico.

NASCAR is in Las Vegas for the Kobalt Tools 400. At 1.5 miles around it’s another superspeedway, so the Daytona and Phoenix races should be a good indicator in regard to who will be fast. The guide can be found here: http://themotorracinggame.wordpress.com/2013-guide-and-links-week-five/. Please make your picks at: http://www.roadracetracks.com/motorracinggame.shtml.

Scores from week 4:

NASCAR Subway Fresh Fit 500 at Phoenix International Raceway, Arizona:

Carl Edwards broke a 70-race winless streak in winning the race in Phoenix. ESPN had little to say about the race (I did not see it), other than to mention a green-white checker at the end with most teams worried about fuel mileage, so I’m guessing it was not too exciting.

Players Scores:

Congratulations to the week’s winner Rubbergoat – two in a row, and now solo in the lead of the season’s standings. He again picked the winner, along with Drewe, who finished a strong second. They were the only two players to pick Carl Edwards. I was bottom on the group, so plummet further down the standings …

Standings:

Week 4

Welcome to week 4. NASCAR continues this week with the Subway Fresh Fit 500 at Phoenix International Raceway, Arizona. Having won at this track with the SCCA, I can tell you from experience that it’s a physically tough track to race at. With almost no banking to speak of, the g-forces pull the driver’s head to the outside of the track on every corner. The track is literally a pain in the neck. While it is very different from Daytona, I think that those who had a strong showing at Daytona should probably be considered strong for Arizona. The guide can be found here: http://themotorracinggame.wordpress.com/2013-guide-and-links-week-four/. Please make your picks at: http://www.roadracetracks.com/motorracinggame.shtml.

Scores from week 3:

NASCAR Daytona 500:

The big news of course was Danica Patrick – first woman to get pole position in a NASCAR premier race, first to lead a green-flag lap, and a top 5 runner most of the race. She finished 8^th. The winner was Jimmie Johnson who we all picked except Sebastian. There were several wrecks during the race, with the one on lap 34 taking out Tony Stewart who had been picked by all of us, and Kevin Harvick picked by four. None of these wrecks approached the horror of Saturday’s Nationwide crash that seriously injured two fans (among 26+ others injured).

Players Scores:

Congratulations to the week’s winner Rubbergoat, who was the only one to pick both Jimmie Johnson and the 2^nd place finisher Dale Earnhardt. Sebastian and Chris both picked four drivers who crashed, which for Sebastian hurt his early start in the season standings. Drewe’s strong performance with 2^nd this week gives him the tie for first in the standings…

Standings:

Those watching closely will notice a change in the Prior points. This was due to a couple of scoring issues that I corrected. Please refer to the week 3 comments for more details.

Week 3

Welcome to week 3. NASCAR’s Championship season starts this week with the Daytona 500. They say that the Shootout (now called the Sprint Unlimited) doesn’t forecast the Daytona winner, but it’s difficult to ignore the strong performances of the likes of Tony Stewart who looked like a contender the whole race. But it is NASCAR, and it is Daytona (i.e. if there’s a crash it’s usually big), so anything can happen.

Scores from week 2:

NASCAR Sprint Unlimited:

The big crash was early in the event and took out 6 cars, including Ambrose, Johnson, Hamlin, Kyle Busch, and Jeff Gordon, all of whom were picked by one or more players. Myself and Rubbergoat also picked Brad Keselowski who wasn’t racing. For myself I had assumed that as series champion he must have had a pole position at some race last year, but apparently not (hence he didn’t qualify for this race).

Players Scores:

Congratulations to the week’s winner Sebastian, who was the only one to pick the race winner Harvick. Chris picked the second place driver Biffle, which bagged him second for the week. Rubbergoat and I were the big loses for not paying attention with Keselowski. In the early points standings I go from 1^st to 5^th, and Sebastian takes over the top spot…

Standings:

Week 2

Welcome to week 2. Just the opening NASCAR event at Daytona this week – the Sprint Unlimited – basically an exhibition race to open the season. It is usually quite exciting to watch since they eliminate drivers between three rounds of racing, with the final round usually a quick sprint with a shorter field of remaining cars that results in lots of contact (and hence crashes). Very unpredictable.

Scores from week 1:

Rally Sweden:

Pos.	No.	Driver / Co-driver Vehicle	Pos.	SS time Penalty	Total time	Diff.Leader Diff.Prev.
1	8	Ogier S. / Ingrassia J. Volkswagen Polo R WRC	WRC 1	03:11:41.9	03:11:41.9	00:00:00.0 00:00:00.0
2	1	Loeb Sébastien / Elena Daniel Citroën DS3 WRC	WRC 2	03:12:23.7	03:12:23.7	00:00:41.8 00:00:41.8
3	4	Østberg Mads / Andersson Jonas Ford Fiesta RS WRC	WRC 3	03:12:46.4 00:00:20.0	03:13:06.4	00:01:24.5 00:00:42.7
4	7	Latvala J. / Anttila Miikka Volkswagen Polo R WRC	WRC 4	03:13:12.5	03:13:12.5	00:01:30.6 00:00:06.1
5	11	Neuville T. / Gilsoul Nicolas Ford Fiesta RS WRC	WRC 5	03:16:48.3	03:16:48.3	00:05:06.4 00:03:35.8
6	15	Hänninen Juho / Tuominen Tomi Ford Fiesta RS WRC	WRC 6	03:17:25.0	03:17:25.0	00:05:43.1 00:00:36.7
7	21	Prokop Martin / Ernst Michal Ford Fiesta RS WRC	WRC 7	03:23:07.3	03:23:07.3	00:11:25.4 00:05:42.3
8	16	Solberg Henning / Axelsson Emil Ford Fiesta RS WRC	WRC 8	03:19:04.6 00:04:30.0	03:23:34.6	00:11:52.7 00:00:27.3
9	5	Novikov Evgeny / Minor Ilka Ford Fiesta RS WRC	WRC 9	03:24:46.6	03:24:46.6	00:13:04.7 00:01:12.0
10	35	Al Rajhi Yazeed / Orr Michael Ford Fiesta S2000	2 1	03:28:08.9	03:28:08.9	00:16:27.0 00:03:22.3

It was a battle between the Sebastien’s with Ogier in the new Volkswagen coming out ahead of Loeb’s Citreon. These two were always well ahead of the rest of the field. This is Volkswagen’s first win at the world rallying level since 1987 (26 years ago when Sweden’s Kenneth Eriksson won the Ivory Coast rally in a Golf GTi), and their first win in Sweden since Harry Bengtsson won in an original Beetle in 1956.

Hirvonen’s woes started early with an off on Stage 2, and managed to climb back to 17th. We all picked Dani Sordo who was in 10th place when he crashed on stage 20 (of 22) and got a DNF. Pat picked Jari Ketomaa who was 18th after day 3, but did not start day 4 when his co-driver got sick.

Players Scores:

Congratulations to me for winning week one. WRC is “my” sport, so I’m always hopeful of a good result. Chris and Sebastian tied for second and like most others (except me) got burned when Novikov went off on stage 20 to end the day in 9th (he had been 5th and ahead of Neuville who I had picked).

Standings:

Week 1

This year’s game begins with the WRC Rally Sweden on February 7^th. Picks need to be made at www.roadracetracks.com/motorracinggame.shtml by midnight GMT on Thursday (7^th) (7 p.m. EST in the U.S.) Please note that this is a change to last year’s timings, when it was midnight Eastern Time in the U.S. The change is made since GMT is the global standard for time, and this is an international game (and it helps programming too).

For the benefit of any new players here’s a quick rundown of the general rules:

- Every week for 43 weeks players pick their top 10 drivers/cars from any of the following series that are competing that weekend (maximum of 7 in any one series): F1, WRC, MotoGP, NASCAR, Indycar, ALMS, WEC, and DTM.

- Where the driver/car finishes in their race determines a player’s points: 50 for a win, 40 for 2^nd, 35 for 3^rd, then 32, 30, 28, 26, 24, 22, 20 for 10th, and 1 less point down to 2 points for 28^th, 2 for 29^th, 2 for 30^th, and 1 point each for finishing positions 31 through 43. No points if the driver is not classified in the officially published results.

- Points accumulate throughout the year with the player with the most total points being crowned the motor racing game champion (good for bragging rights).

- If a player misses a week they receive 90% of the lowest score among players who did play (higher percentage during the first 3 weeks to encourage people to join the game).

- No soliciting, but commentary on player’s favorite (or any) series is highly encouraged.

The game is good fun – especially if you are a motorhead

Here’s the link again to make your picks: www.roadracetracks.com/motorracinggame.shtml. Please e-mail me through WordPress or at the pick site for a user-id and a PIN. The default PIN is 0000 (zeros). You can use this default as long as you want, but having your own PIN will help protect you from other people posting picks in your name.

Good luck!

2013 Week Zero

WELCOME TO THE 2013 MOTOR RACING GAME!

WEEK 0 (zero)

Yes, week zero. That seems strange but this is my first attempt at running the game this year, and with the only race in the next three weeks being the WRC Monte Carlo Rally this coming weekend, it seemed a good idea to have a practice run. So please treat this as a real week even though the results won’t count - we’ll actually start with Rally Sweden as week 1.

There will be a couple of changes this year.

First, to try and ease the scoring burden, you’ll need to go to an external website (www.roadracetracks.com/motorracinggame.shtml) to enter your picks. Sorry if this is inconvenient, but it will allow for automated scoring. Also you’ll need a PIN (and maybe a user-id) to make your entries – please e-mail me (from here, or from the external website) your preferred user-id and PIN.

Second, the minimum score percentage for the first four weeks will be 99, 96, 93, then 90% onward.

Finally, please be kind if there’s not the same kind of flair in this year’s post – I’m based in the U.S. and coverage for many of the series is seriously lacking (except of course NASCAR), so I will not be posting the same level of pre and post race commentary as Sebastian was. However I encourage any and all participants to post comments, for the benefit of all, on what went on in the various races as the year progresses.

To reiterate this weeks events:

WRC Monte Carlo Rally

Enter your picks at: www.roadracetracks.com/motorracinggame.shtml

And let me know what you think. Thanks.

Final

Drewe’s Performance Charts

Do visit Drewe’s fine charts and tables to see such as the Full Year Difference Chart and Form Guide, which Drewe is updating every week.

Click to open Performance Charts in new window.

Scores

Results – Top Ten

	Formula 1
	Brazil
1	Button
2	Alonso
3	Massa
4	Webber
5	Hulkenberg
6	Vettel
7	Schumacher
8	Vergne
9	Kobayashi
10	Räikkönen

It was a jolly exciting race in Brazil. It was variously led by Hamilton, Button and Hulkenberg, which was settled in Button’s favour after Hulkenberg, challenging for the lead at the first corner of lap fifty-five, crashed Hamilton out (20th). The lap chart gives indication of just how complicated the race was. Grosjean crashed on lap six (21st), and Maldonado spun on the opening lap (22nd). The twelve-year-old won another title.

Player Scores

Non-entries get 151 according to the 90% rule.

Very well done to Maverick, Drewe, and iomracer for their joint-win. The rest of us chose to gamble by not picking the sensible seven, which did not work out for us, especially those of us that dropped Button, although Hulkenberg looked like an inspired choice for those that had him until he screwed up.

Leaderboard

Pos	Pre	+/-	Name	Prior	Wk 45	Total	Differences
1	1		Sebastian	12259	174	12433	0	-
2	2		iomracer	12040	215	12255	178	178
3	3		RubberGoat	12026	168	12194	239	61
4	4		Maverick	11944	215	12159	274	35
5	5		Chris W.	11876	151	12027	406	132
6	6		Pat W.	11794	210	12004	429	23
7	7		Drewe	11682	215	11897	536	107
8	8		The Speedgeek	11391	184	11575	858	322
9	9		Jackie	10604	151	10755	1678	820
10	10		Matt	10175	151	10326	1807	429
11	11		Ryan	9679	151	9830	2603	496
12	12		Jay	9465	151	9616	2817	214
13	13		James	9396	151	9547	2886	69

No eleventh-hour changes in order, with Gavin’s gamble not paying off, and Patrick able to narrow but not eradicate his deficit to the absent Chris. It is a shame there has not been more leaderboard action in the last few weeks, and that unlike the two previous seasons we did not have a late NASCAR-only week to mix things up a bit.

Congratulations to myself for winning the season. I won a few weeks but more significantly only had a single last-place. However, Jackie was ahead of us all on points when she decided to quit the game. iomracer wins rookie of the year; it is a game for which players need a while to get into their stride, and iomracer joined for week four with a 134-point deficit, fell to 215 behind me by week eighteen, and has slightly gained on me since.

Wins

	Outright Wins		Joint Wins		Total Wins
Drewe	4		6		10
iomracer	4		4		8
Chris	5		2		7
RubberGoat	6		0		6
Sebastian	6		0		6
Speedgeek	5		1		6
Pat W.	3		1		4
Maverick	1		2		3
Jackie	2		0		2

Drewe’s recurrence of being involved in almost every joint-score winning week gives him the highest total of wins. For the second year in a row, Pat seems to have been a bit short of luck across the season with solid picks letting him down. Maverick is a consistent player that all too often has missed those bits of luck needed to win a week, despite a lot of top-three results.

Highest Five Scores

Player	Score		Week
Sebastian	408		15
Drewe	407		32
Maverick	402		15
Chris	395		35
Drewe	395		35

I am afraid I win this one as well. Drewe features twice. The highest score in 2010 was 411, but in that year players were allowed to pick more than one driver from sports-car entries giving more opportunity for very high scores. Last year, the high-score was 422. I think the standard of picks has been highest this year, plus more series than previous seasons (with the inclusion of both MotoGP and WRC), but the number of four-hundred-plus scores was not that high because of just how frequently at least one of the obvious selections has bitten the dust.

Finally

Thank you all for playing. I hope you enjoyed all enjoyed it, and that it added interest to following the various racing. Thanks to Patrick who developed the game (Too Much Racing Game), and to Andy who is responsible for the e-mail based game on which it is based (All-Racing Fantasy League). Thanks to Drewe for his super-dooper Google spreadsheets.

I am not planning on running the game next year. It was a close decision to do it this year. If anyone else wants to take over, I would be happy to help with scoring, and this blog is available.

Provisional Forty-Five

Sadly, Chris has missed his entry, perhaps because of the distraction of Thanksgiving. That might give Pat a shot at gaining fifth-place after missing last week. The only player with a unique choice is the (usually) most conservative player, RubberGoat, with Maldonado. Gavin has also selected Hulkenberg, giving himself a shot at taking second-place off iomracer fourteen points ahead. Drewe, Maverick and iomracer have all chosen the obvious seven that most of the rest of us might have gone for if not for the circumstances of the last week. I find myself in the position of wanting the errant Grosjean to do well and the reliable Button to blow it!

Looking at the weather forecast (click on the days for more detail), it suggests wet qualifying and a wetter race. If I had checked it earlier, I might have changed my selection, but whenever I did that last year based on a wet forecast, it never helped.

Week Forty-Five

Welcome all to Week Forty-Five. We reach the final week with Formula One in Brazil. Please pick seven drivers before 6 AM BST Friday 23rd November (1 AM ET) (essentially late Thursday night).

Drewe’s Performance Charts

Do visit Drewe’s fine charts and tables to see such as the Full Year Difference Chart and Form Guide, which Drewe is updating every week.

Click to open Performance Charts in new window.

Scores

Results – Top Tens

	Formula 1		NASCAR
	Austin		Homestead
1	Hamilton		Gordon
2	Vettel		Bowyer
3	Alonso		Newman
4	Massa		Kyle B.
5	Button		Biffle
6	Räikkönen		Truex
7	Grosjean		Almirola
8	Hulkenberg		Harvick
9	Maldonado		Kurt B.
10	Senna		Earnhardt

Vettel took pole and the lead for most the race, but just for once was caught and passed for the win, Hamilton maintaining his unbeaten USA record. Webber had his customary KERS malfunction, followed by a race-ending alternator failure (23rd).

In a bit of a turn up at Homestead, Gordon beat Bowyer to the win. Edwards was 12th. Keselowski did run out of fuel at one point, but won the title, finishing a lap down in 15th. Stewart was 17th, Kenseth 18th, and Hamlin 24th. Johnson lost any chance of winning the championship with a transmission failure (36th).

Player Scores

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

Non-entries get 199 according to the 90% rule. RubberGoat and iomracer were joint-second having both made duplicate picks.

Congratulations to me for a strong win, subject to getting less bad luck than anyone else. My approach of avoiding the title contenders, as I feared both or either might compromise their races for championship strategy reasons, worked out well. My tactic of discounting Gordon and Bowyer, in case they clashed again, turned out not to be that clever at all.

We all had a terrible time with the NASCAR, with fifth-placed Biffle being the highest finisher that any of us chose. Those that decided to pick extra from Homestead dropped Massa or Massa/Button, and with Felipe being fourth and Jenson fifth, it did not give that tactic much help, never mind how tricky the Sprint Cup result proved to be.

Leaderboard

Pos	Pre	+/-	Name	Prior	Wk 44	Total	Differences
1	1		Sebastian	11989	270	12259	0	-
2	2		iomracer	11793	247	12040	219	219
3	3		RubberGoat	11779	247	12026	233	14
4	4		Maverick	11700	244	11944	315	82
5	5		Chris W.	11655	221	11876	383	68
6	6		Pat W.	11595	199	11794	465	82
7	7		Drewe	11458	224	11682	577	112
8	8		The Speedgeek	11157	234	11391	868	291
9	9		Jackie	10405	199	10604	1655	787
10	10		Matt	9976	199	10175	1784	429
11	11		Ryan	9480	199	9679	2580	496
12	12		Jay	9266	199	9465	2794	214
13	13		James	9197	199	9396	2863	69
14	14		New players	9178	199	9377	2882	19

No changes in position with only Andy and Drewe outscoring the player above them.

Apart from the battle between iomracer and Gavin for second, most the gaps look unbridgeable. However, with rain a possibility in Brazil, plus uncertainty about alternators on the Red Bulls, McLaren’s iffy reliability, and Ferrari’s ability to muck up a title showdown, maybe selected lateral choices might be worth a punt for some.

This Week

Roster

· Formula 1 – Interlagos, Brazil

The deadline is 6 AM BST Friday 23rd November (1 AM ET). Also remember the countdown widget rounds up on days.

Pick seven drivers.

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.

Click to open guide/links to this week’s events in new window.