TMR Game – Week 3

Welcome to Week 3 of the Too Much Racing Game!

Don’t worry you didn’t miss anything – Week 2 didn’t feature any racing.

Quick-Start – * Warning – Early Cutoff *

If you are short on time and want to cut straight to it, just reply to this post with your picks for this weekend’s WRC and NASCAR events. The closing point this week is early: 7am GMT Friday 12th February. You may pick up to 10 drivers with no more than 7 from a single series. Good luck!

* *

That is the latest I can hold the entry period – Rally Sweden’s first ‘proper’ stage gets under way at 7.18am GMT (8.18am Swedish time) and I don’t want picks arriving when competitors are on-course.

Please note for future weeks if this post has not appeared and you’re unable to wait you can email me your picks and I will publish them here. I am also looking for feedback on an appropriate closing times every week.

New?

If you are new to the game, it is simply this:  Make a weekly pick of up to 10 drivers from a mix of racing series.

You might be a specialist in one championship and know nothing about the others – it doesn’t matter.
You might think you know a little about lots of series but not enough to win – it doesn’t matter.

The game is just for fun, to see what would happen if you created a ‘pickem’ style game with lots of races, and is my way of spreading a little bit of knowledge of the racing world you otherwise might not encounter. Most of us when asked can name one rally driver, one IndyCar driver, one NASCAR driver, one sportscar driver – even if we know nothing else about the series. You’d be surprised how much you do know.

Don’t worry if you didn’t enter the first week – there was only one race and it will be easy to catch up.

Game News

I’ve created a sub-section of the blog for the game: https://toomuchracing.com/game/

You’ll be able to refer to that page to see the race schedule, a summary of the rules and the latest points standings. It is a work-in-progress at the moment and weekly updates and entries will still be via the main blog.

How To Enter

1. Reply to this post.

2. List up to TEN drivers. Remember you can only pick up to SEVEN from a single series (if you go over I’ll take the first seven in order).

3. Send your entry before Friday.

That’s it!

You can have any combination within the framework, so you could have 7 from WRC and 3 from NASCAR, or vice versa, or anything in between, e.g.:

WRC	7	6	5	4	3
NASCAR	3	4	5	6	7

This is the first week with more than one event and I’m intrigued about the different strategy choices you come up with, not just in numbers but in driver combinations. I wish you good luck! If you are not familiar with this week’s events, read on for some possible pointers.

Events in Week 3

Every week in this section I hope to provide a short paragraph about each race, a few options for people aren’t fans and are happy to guess, and a link to the entry list for those who want to make an informed choice.

There are two eligible events this week:

NASCAR Sprint Cup – Daytona 500, Daytona, Florida, USA

This is the first race of the long NASCAR season. A field of 43 drivers will contest the 500 miles and probably about half of those could pick up decent game points, but equally they could get wiped out in ‘The Big One’. Superspeedways like this are a bit of a lottery.

Daytona has a unique qualifying system and the front row has already been decided. Mark Martin is on pole with Dale Earnhardt Jr alongside him. The remainder of the field will be set via two qualifying races to be held Thursday night – though they could come too late for this week’s game cut-off, for most of us at least.

Some options:  Jimmie Johnson, Jeff Gordon, Mark Martin, Dale Jr, Juan Pablo Montoya, Kyle Busch, Kevin Harvick. Here are the results from the most recent practice session as at Wednesday night.

World Rally – Rally Sweden

The first WRC round of the year is a snow rally and you are gambling on the drivers not ending up in a snow bank or sliding into a tree. This rally marks Kimi Raikkonen’s debut as a professional rally driver after some warm-up drives in lesser events. Is he worth a punt or is it too soon? Marcus Gronholm also appears in a one-off drive in a Ford Focus, in a well-run car in this event he loves he could do well. Note that Ken Block has NOT been entered for this rally.

Some options:  Sebastien Loeb, Mikko Hirvonen, Petter Solberg, Henning Solberg, Marcus Gronholm.  Here is a PDF Entry List.