Game Week 1: 30-31 January 2010

Welcome to the Too Much Racing Game..thing! I haven’t thought of a good name yet (help please?).

This is the entry post for the first round of the year, which only covers one race, the Rolex 24 at Daytona. Wait don’t run away! There are plenty of familiar names so just pick your favourites!

If you already know your picks just hit reply and list your entries for this week. You have until FRIDAY at 7pm UK time (2pm US ET). If not, read on.

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RULES

See here for a further discussion of the Game’s rules, but the following is all you really need to know:

– Pick 10 drivers per week, maximum of 7 drivers per race (e.g. you can pick up to 7 this week, there is only one race).

– The game includes F1, IndyCar, NASCAR, DTM, WRC, ALMS and LMS events, as well as Daytona and Le Mans. This sounds confusing at first – don’t worry, you should only ever have at most a choice of 4 events per week… And you should be able to get by perfectly fine just by picking just two, like F1 and NASCAR.

– I will post updates every Wednesday from now until November. Updates will show points scored that week and provide details of the upcoming races.

– Don’t worry if the only race that week is unknown to you. I’d imagine for most reading now this is one of those weeks. You only need to ask a question and either myself or somebody else will do our best to answer. Or, just guess! It doesn’t matter, the game is only for fun so have fun with it, take risks, do what you want!

– In any case, I’ll try to walk through what’s on each week so that nobody gets lost – this week I have gone into extra detail because it is week one, and because this race isn’t really followed outside of the US. Its included in the game because the driver mix is interesting. The NASCAR champ racing the IRL champ, who’s sharing a car with Montoya, with Bourdais thrown into the mix? Can’t resist that.

– Tip: Picks carry over from week to week, so later on you may like to have a NASCAR driver or two in there just in case you forget to enter, since they race most weeks.

Ready? Let’s go.

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WEEK 1

Events:

Rolex 24 at Daytona  (Entry List)

Several notable names are joining the series regulars for this race, here is a selection of cars with ‘name’ drivers you may recognise:

Juan Pablo Montoya (NASCAR, ex-F1, ex-CART), Scott Dixon (IRL) and Dario Franchitti (IRL) share a car for Chip Ganassi;

Justin Wilson (IRL) and Max Papis (ex-F1, ex-CART, NASCAR) share the other Ganassi car;

Pedro Lamy (Peugeot Le Mans, ex-F1) and Max Angelelli (sportscars) drive the SunTrust car;

Sebastien Bourdais (ex-F1, ex-ChampCar), Sascha Maassen (LM) and Emmanual Collard (LM) drive a Crown Royal car;

Ryan Hunter-Reay (IRL) and Lucas Luhr (LM) share another Crown Royal car;

Raphael Matos (IRL) and Butch Leizinger (lots of sportscars) share the Brumos entry;

Jimmie Johnson (NASCAR) and Jimmy Vasser (ex-CART) drive the GAINSCO / Bob Stallings entry;

Ricardo Zonta (ex-F1) drives for Krohn Racing;  Buddy Rice (ex-IRL?) is in the Spirit of Daytona;

And of course, lots of series regulars including Scott Pruett. Consult the entry list for more. These are all in the main Daytona Prototype class, scroll down to look through the GT entries – you never know which of the DP cars will hit trouble, might be worth a punt on a GT if you’re feeling lucky.

Important Note – the Game scoring will be based on the overall finishing position, not class position.

*If you have no idea what I’m saying, just pick 7 of the above!*

It is up to you how you pick your entry. You can pick Montoya, Dixon and Franchitti if you like, but remember that they are driving the same car so if it breaks down you’ve lost 3 of your 7. That said, they are one of the hot tips for the win. It is up to you whether you want to spread the risk among cars that might not be good, or place your eggs in one basket. Nobody has the right answer until Sunday night.

Final note – qualifying is on Thursday. I’ve held entries open until Friday because this is the first event of the year and I think maybe less than half of my readership know anything about it – and it is a 24 hour race so qualifying is almost meaningless. For the rest of the year I would like to close entries before qualifying – there may be an exception again for Le Mans, we’ll see!

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HOW TO ENTER

Two easy steps.

1 – Pick your 7 drivers (that’s individual DRIVERS not cars).

2 – Type it as a reply to this post.

That’s it!

Deadline –  Friday 29th January 2010 at 7pm GMT, that’s 2pm EST in the US/Canada. You have 2 days, and entries MUST be made in reply to this post. Emails and tweets won’t count.

Have fun, and good luck! Don’t forget to ask plenty of questions.

EDIT – This race is covered on SPEED TV in the US and Canada, with patchy coverage on Eurosport across Europe. The race starts at 3.30pm ET Saturday, that’s 8.30pm UK.