24 January 2010 – I Watch Too Much Racing

I have a proposal for a new competition to be hosted on this blog. The idea is that you submit a selection of drivers every week as a comment on the blog, and score points based on their finishing positions.

I’m sure most of you will be familiar with the idea, it has been around forever in various forms, and I think most of us take part in at least one such competition already (I play at SofaF1 and plan to play at F1Wolf too).

So why set up a new one? Well, instead of being just about F1 or IndyCar, I plan to open it up to cover both. I’m not sure of the level to go to yet but I want to include sportscar races and NASCAR – I’d welcome some thoughts in the comments.

Some background – I play in Andy The Speedgeek’s All-Racing Fantasy League. This is a game where you ‘own’ 14 drivers and each week you nominate 5 oval racers and 5 road course racers. You can trade drivers between weekends. It is a tricky game and I enjoy it, and it looks like being an even closer contest this year than last.

Recently Andy was looking for team owners and while a cross-motorsport game was well received, some were put off by an email game limited to 13 teams, or baulked at the attention it may demand. I happen to enjoy the format but can see their point, so I suggested a simpler version of the game hosted on a blog, without the trading/ownership rules.

Thankfully Andy didn’t evict me from the game or dock me 50 points for corrupting his idea, and since his family has recently welcomed a baby in to the world (congrats again!) he’s a bit short on time, so has generously allowed me to go ahead with it here.

Proposed Rules – All of these are up for discussion and I hope to hear your thoughts!

1: The game will run every week from the Daytona 24 Hours until the final NASCAR event of the season.

2: There is no requirement to retain the same drivers, just pick the ones you think will do well that weekend.

3: It will include the following series/events:

– Formula 1 – IndyCar
– NASCAR Cup – Daytona 24 Hours
– Le Mans 24 Hours
– Sebring and Petit Le Mans from the ALMS (maybe the full season but I’m really not sure?)
– I’d like to find a way to include WRC if possible

4: Original rule: Pick 5 oval and 5 road drivers per week
Proposed modified rule: Pick up to 10 drivers, with no more than 7 from one series.
7 could be made 6 or 8, I’m fishing here really. For example I’d imagine most of the SPC visitors will only want to pick F1 guys with the odd exception (I may be wrong?). And why yes, this is a shameless attempt at bumping up participant numbers!

5: The original game has a carry-over rule. If you forget to make changes, your team from last week is entered for this week. Shall we retain that rule or remove it?

6: If a driver is racing in more than one event that weekend you may nominate them for one event only, the entry must specify which event you are choosing.

7: The scoring system will be the one used in the original ARFL game, that is:
50-40-35-32-30-28-26-24-22-20-19-18-17-16-15-14-13-12-11-10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-2-1-1-1 (and 1 down to 43rd).

I’m aware that this means an F1 win is equal to a NASCAR win, but this is just a bit of fun and not an allegedly definitive ranking system, so it doesn’t matter! It probably means you need to be picking NASCAR in the non-F1 non-IRL weeks.

The ARFL system also awards 3 for pole, 2 for FL and 2 for most laps led – will that be too complicated or is it fine? Shared drives score equally, so if Kristensen and McNish win Le Mans both would get 50.

8: Penalties. If a driver is awarded a points / position penalty after the event, it will be applied to this game retrospectively. Deductions will be made to the same fraction of a win as the actual series. e.g. a 10 point deduction in F1 is 10 pts divided by 25 pts for a win x 50 points for a win in the game = 20 points deducted in the game.
Penalty = 10 / 25 * 50 = 20.
Penalty = ((actual penalty) / (points for a win in that series)) x (points for a win in this game)

9: The game is free to enter and the prize is to proclaim to the world, that “I Watch Too Much Racing”!

I plan to post an entry blog post every Wednesday or Thursday, with entries to close every Friday at say 6pm UK time (1pm US Eastern). Le Mans week may be a bit earlier because qualifying is on Thursday.

I think that’s it. I have attempted to balance the rules of the original game with the expected preferences of my regular visitors (and myself, if I’m honest), and the need to make a pick’em game easy to play. I’d appreciate any thoughts you may have, and thanks again to Andy for his help.

The point of the game is to get people interested in more than their own little world, and hopefully one or two will like the idea enough to join the original ARFL game in 2011, where there is prize money on offer.

All being well, the first entry post will be posted on Wednesday for the Daytona 24 Hours. There are a lot of IndyCar, NASCAR and ex-F1 drivers taking part so it should be easier than it sounds, and I’ll go through that on Wednesday.

Following the visit to the Autosport show last weekend, a few of us moved on to the centre of Birmingham to meet with some more people from the online motorsport community at the Bloggers & Friends Karting Competition, organised by Alianora La Canta.

It was a good evening’s racing with good organisation from TeamWorks Karting despite their being understaffed on a cold January Saturday evening. There were a couple of instances of technical issues with the karts which were resolved in a professional manner, and they did try and get through the programme quickly as they previous group were a little late leaving, though I did think they were moving a little too quickly at times.

Unfortunately one of those issues happened to me during my best race of the day! I was 2nd at the time and confident of finishing in that position, having run 5th or 6th in the 6- or 7-strong heats all night. Then the power in my kart just died. All the worse – it was my final heat of the day. Still, a good time was had and the karts and circuit posed a bigger challenge than I had expected, so it was satisfying after each heat to realise you were getting faster in every race.

I was more surprised because the karts were electric and we were warned not to brake and accelerate at the same time. My expectations were therefore low, but those things accelerated well and certainly felt quick through the left-handed sweeper after the starting grid. It didn’t feel underpowered at any stage (well..apart from when mine died on me) and for novice/occasional karters such as myself, they are the right speed for the course.

The circuit is very bumpy in places, and it felt fast, partly because karts are so low they always feel quicker than they are, and possibly because the karts were squirming around a lot on the slippery surface. Despite the bumps and slipperiness it was actually a well-designed layout featuring every type of corner you can think of, from sweepers to hairpins to the tricky double-apex right-hander where you have to brake later than you think.

Needless to say, like any racing driver I’m convinced I could have done better with a few more laps and without the technical error, but those are just excuses – it was a great night out and in reality I wouldn’t have got that much higher up the rankings given the strength of opposition – our group of 8 or so had been joined by what seemed like regulars to the circuit, to make up numbers. Eventually I came 17th of 22 (was it 20 or 22?), but I think I beat Chris and Alia and wasn’t far behind some of the others, so I was pleased with that.

Scott deserves a special mention because a) he kicked the asses of everyone in our get-together, and b) managed to get himself among those people who had patently been here a few times before, and he made the Final of the top 8 karters of the day (including beating his Dad). Sadly there was a bit of a Trulli Train going on and he couldn’t get around the group of three holding them up (in fairness neither could the others also stuck) so he finished 8th overall – yet that was a fantastic achievement having never seen the circuit before, or this type of kart.

It was really great to meet everybody even if they decided just to spectate, and if I go to Autosport again next year I will definitely be joining in with the already-announced karting meetup. I may even come up anyway, we’ll see what the money situation is like nearer the time.

Note – There are plans afoot for a summer karting event. Contact Alia for details. Unfortunately I doubt I can’t make it as it looks like it will be held somewhere North of Birmingham and I am on the South coast.