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.
The Motor Racing Game 
Thanks for running this, this year. It’s been fun.
Comment by maverickpf — November 26, 2012 @ 12:43 am
Thanks for the game all. It shows consistency is key – most wins, 2 of the 5 highest scores, and I total 7th in the final running….. I enjoyed it though, so all good!
See you all next year!
Comment by Drewe — November 26, 2012 @ 4:11 am
Several of us were hit by poor luck, poor judgment, and poor timing! It has been a very odd year for DNFs and other happenings. Well done to all the rookies for doing so well.
Thanks for taking over the game this year and putting the work into it. I obviously completely understand the reasons for not wanting to continue doing so, I can’t say I’m drawn to returning to it. 🙂
Comment by Pat W — November 26, 2012 @ 10:02 pm
That bad stretch right in the middle of 6 weeks in a row or so really killed me. I was pretty consistent otherwise. I suppose that shows we shouldn’t overthink picks or try to outplay others until the very end.
Thanks a million to Seb for running the game this year. I hope someone decides to take up the mantle.
Best,
Chris
Comment by Chris W — November 28, 2012 @ 4:23 pm
Many thanks, Sebastian, for funning the game this year. I know for a fact that it is not easy, and can be very, very time consuming (those blasted sports car races with their 40-50 entries take forever to score), so I understand your not wanting to do it again next year. I’ll miss the game, for sure.
Enjoy the off season, and enjoy the races next year!
Andy
Comment by The Speedgeek — December 9, 2012 @ 4:22 pm
Happy holidays! I was wondering if we could divide and conquer with running the game in 2013. I’d be willing to collect the picks, keep score, and publish the results (race results, weekly pick results, and running yearly tally among players). Could someone else compile the racing links and provide the pre-race and post race commentary? One caveat to my offer to score the game – I’d want players to make their entries through a form on one of my websites so that I can semi-automate the scoring process – we’d still use this blog for commentary and publishing of results (which I’d copy-paste from my other website). Anyone else willing to help?
Comment by iomracer — December 30, 2012 @ 3:51 am
The suggestion is more than appreciated, but a bit tricky as I do not mind helping with the scoring, but do not want to do the rest.
I would be willing to do the guide-and-links (although in previous years players were expected to do that for themselves), and help out with the schedule table, but the problem is finding someone to run the game in terms of promoting it, doing all the weekly posts, and dealing with any general issues.
I did think about automating the scoring to some extent myself using C++ to generate HTML-code for scoring tables, but there were not enough players to make it worth the trouble.
If I knew you had a web-site, I would have added it to the side-bar. I presume ‘iomracer’ is a contraction of Isle of Man racer, although I believe WRC is your specialist area.
Comment by Sebastian X — December 31, 2012 @ 11:35 pm
I went ahead and programmed the scoring with HTML/Perl – see http://www.roadracetracks.com/motorracinggame.shtml for a sample of what it looks like (you can play with it – it only has sample data, not real data – you can use pin 1234 for anyone).
Can you elaborate on “promoting it”? My offer included doing the schedule (it would be selectable in the aforementioned web page by selecting the week of interest – actually it is already up to date for the year), and doing the weekly posts in terms of players picks, the results of the races (table format), players results, and placing the scoring tables here at wordpress. If by “promoting it” you meant the pre and post-race commentary, I understand why you’re reluctant to do that – it means at least watching/reading the news for each series. But the lack of coverage in the U.S. for many of the series is why I can’t volunteer to do that part – in fact last year I got most of my news for MotoGP, WEC, and DTM here at this site! Let me know if you meant something else.
BTW you are correct with the contraction, but the Isle of Man was where I was born – I live in the U.S. now, and have done so for a long time. There is someone else in the U.K. who is a motorcycle racer and has recently adopted the handle “iomracer”, but that’s not me.
Comment by iomracer — January 5, 2013 @ 12:16 am
That scoring thing looks super-dooper. I will post a longer response later, but by ‘promotion’, I mean attracting a field of players. Last year, especially with help from Pat and Jackie on their blogs, we managed thirteen players, not all of whom stuck around. I presume similar help will be forthcoming this year. Quite a few of the players are bloggers. More later.
Comment by Sebastian X — January 5, 2013 @ 7:09 pm
Sorry about the delay in my reply, but things have been a bit complicated for me.
Comment by Sebastian X — January 7, 2013 @ 10:55 pm
It is fantastic news if you are up for taking over the game. I would be happy to do the Guide and Links pages, which I usually did the Thursday before, and then e-mail you the link (although you could find them anyway. I would also update the schedule table as well as your interface providing the information, if that is OK (you are in charge now).
I got my information mostly from http://www.autosport.com/ (which now has a pesky fifty-news-stories-per-month-without-subscribing limit), Wikipedia, and official series web-sites. There were times I felt the information I offered was a bit patchy, occasionally a bit wrong, but I did my best, and players pitched in sometimes with additional insight. I did mean last year to do a general page that listed places to go for news and info, but never actually got around to it.
In the case of post-race results and summaries, I am not wild about doing those. It was one of the things that became a pain. I am not sure how necessary they are, since people can always look it up; maybe links to the official results (which you will need to check anyway) might suffice, or someone else might volunteer, or just do without. The write-ups were often cribbed from reports I looked up, and frequently trying to find out why a choice someone picked only came 21st in a NASCAR or sports-car race could be time-consuming and I was still not always able to find the reason.
I need to give you administrator status for this blog. If you have a WordPress identity, then that would be easiest, but if not, I can e-mail you an invite, and it will enable you to create a suitable WordPress identity. You might want to pick a new theme, as you see fit.
It is up to you to choose things like the series that will be included, if you want to alter the deadline, any adjustments to rules, et cetera.
(One suggestion I might make is increasing the minimum-score percentage for the first four or so weeks. Last year, it was 99% for Week One, as I was caught out by the Monte Carlo Rally, thinking I had a bit more time before the Daytona 24. After that, it was 90% for the rest of the season, but with some people joining a bit late, maybe a little more generosity early on would be worthwhile, but that is your call. I do not know what policy you want to adopt on e-mail reminders, but if suitable, I would be OK to act as a back-stop.)
I recently discovered there is a band called ‘Sebastian X’, but fortunately they seem to be fairly obscure, and I ungenerously hope they will remain so!
Comment by Sebastian X — January 9, 2013 @ 7:57 pm
Sebastian – it sounds like we have a plan to keep the game going, although I don’t think it’ll have the same flair as last year when you were running it. Yes, please e-mail me an invite for a WordPress identity, and I’m glad you can do the Guide and links page and the schedule table. I think we’ll skip the first WRC event – the Monte – since following it are two weeks with no races. So I suggest we start with Rally Sweden on 2/7/2013, but list Monte as a practice/information week to get everyone still following on board. And finally yes, I think a little more generosity for players joining late – I suggest 99% the 1st week, 96% the 2nd week, 93% the 3rd week, and 90% the fourth week and onwards.
Comment by iomracer — January 12, 2013 @ 4:52 am
What is the status on the Daytona 24 Hours? It is on the 26th/27th of January. I am not for or against dropping it. On one hand, it has a sort of Blue Riband sports-car Triple Crown status, and on the other hand, it is not quite the race it used to be and is does not quite fit in being the only Grand-Am event to have been included in TMRG. If we are sticking to the same series as last year, or if you inform me otherwise, I will get the schedule-table put together.
Comment by Sebastian X — January 12, 2013 @ 4:28 pm
Point on guide and links – couldn’t you just have a series of links on the sidebar. 2012’s table of results are readily available on wikipedia and from there there are usually links to the individual races for more info. You could link the 2012, 2011, 2010 standings to cover form. Then there are links like http://msn.foxsports.com/nascar/cup/sortableTrackStats for Sprint Cup form on each circuit. You could then simply cover each series with a quick guide at the start of the year.
Comment by Mav — January 12, 2013 @ 7:46 pm
I am thinking of creating a general resources page. I do not mind doing the guide-and-links. The links to results at that week’s circuit are useful, a task to do, but then when I make my own picks, it means I can use the links myself. The links to things like series standings-tables get copied from previous guides, so are little trouble.
The broad thinking was that I wanted to help new players with strategy insight that more experienced players had had chance to pick up to make it more even, and do a bit of research for everyone since I would do most of it for myself and might as well share it. I did feel giving advice was a bit preachy, but it was well meant and people could ignore it. I am not sure it worked, but I thought potential players might be more willing to play in a game involving multiple series they were often unfamilier with if given the sort of info they needed to make picks, making it more a strategy game than a who-did-the-most-research.
One thing about this game continuing is that I had thought I could go back to happily ignoring MotoGP, but I guess I now will have to follow the saga of Lorenzo/Rossi at Yamaha et cetera. Groan.
I will have a look at that link which is a new one to me.
Comment by Sebastian X — January 13, 2013 @ 11:09 am
Thanks Sebastian for all your hard work this year.
Comment by rubbergoat — January 14, 2013 @ 9:13 am