TMR Game – Week 12

Welcome to Week 12 of the Too Much Racing Game!

I really enjoyed both the IndyCar and MotoGP races at the weekend, I hope to write a couple of paragraphs tomorrow but we’ll see what time there is. I didn’t catch the Le Mans Series or the NASCAR Cup, I hope some of you were able to follow along.

This is a special week for the TMR Game – it is one of the busiest in terms of number of events in a single weekend. There are five eligible events this week, this is only topped by the weekend of 22-23 August with six. There are all manner of ways to play this week – do we split ourselves across as many series as possible and try and pick lots of winners, or do we concentrate on the top runners in just a couple of series and hope they have a good week? You can bet this week is going to create some differences in the scoring.

You’ll be pleased to hear we have two quiet weeks after this with only two races per week.

Quick-Start

Racing this week:
F1:  Chinese Grand Prix, Shanghai, China;
IndyCar: GP of Long Beach, California, USA;
ALMS:  Long Beach, California, USA;
NASCAR:  Texas Motor Speedway, Ft Worth, Texas, USA;
WRC:  Rally of Turkey

Usual restrictions apply, pick up to 10 drivers, no more than 7 from one race… though this week this may not be a problem!

The cutoff is Saturday 17th April at 4.59am BST (British Summer Time = GMT+1), that’s 11.59pm Friday night US EDT. I am aware the first day of the rally is Friday. I’m willing to sacrifice that in order to maintain a consistent closing point – henceforth I will only change this time when the first day is Thursday.

For the full results from Week 11, read on.

How To Enter

1. Reply to this post.

2. List up to 10 drivers, with no more than 7 from a single event.

3. Send your entry before the stated deadline, usually some time on a Friday. You can make as many changes as you like until the closing point, I’ll take your last entry.

Most weeks feature 2 or 3 races, some weeks may have more than that and some may only have one. There’s not a rule stating you have to choose a driver in each race, any combination of up to 10 drivers is accepted.

Further information can be found on the  game sub-page which will be updated later in the week.

Results – Week 11

Top Tens

	Week 11	NASCAR	IndyCar	LMS
	Points	Phoenix	Barber Motorsports	La Castellet
1	50	Ryan Newman	Helio Castroneves	Capello/McNish
2	40	Jeff Gordon	Scott Dixon	Fernandez/Primat/Mucke
3	35	Jimmie Johnson	Dario Franchitti	Belicchi/Boullion/Smith
4	32	Mark Martin	Will Power	Panis/Lapierre/Sarrazin
5	30	Juan Pablo Montoya	Marco Andretti	Ayari/Andre/Duval
6	28	Matt Kenseth	Ryan Briscoe	Ragues/Mailleux/Ickx
7	26	Carl Edwards	Justin Wilson	Leventis/Watts/Kane
8	24	Kyle Busch	Tony Kanaan	Hein/Moreau
9	22	Clint Bowyer	Mike Conway	Erdos/Newton/Wallace
10	20	Joey Logano	Alex Tagliani	Lahaye/Nicolet

Ryan Newman took the NASCAR win, with three Hendrick cars finishing 2-3-4. Nice to see Montoya get a good result in what seems to be a hit-and-miss season.

In a good IndyCar race it was a case of  ‘another week, another Penske win’ but this time it was Helio Castroneves rather than Will Power, who was 4th. Of course if I tip them now, another team will win this week! Very good to see Marco Andretti have a good run, though it was spoiled a little by running out of fuel and having to top up at the end.

Allan McNish and Dindo Capello won the 8-hour LMS race, though Tom Kristensen didn’t score as he withdrew on Friday with an injury. The Panis/Lapierre/Sarrazin ORECA Peugeot was delayed early on and lost 9 laps to the Audi which it never recovered, though it did pick off most of the other runners to finish 4th. This left AMR and Rebellion to complete the podium.

Points Awarded – *revised*

Player	NASCAR	IRL	LMS	Week 11
Sebastian	35	95	236	366
Jon Waldock	71	85	164	320
Burwellian	71	93	146	310
Pat W	80	100	122	302
James	73	95	132	300
The Speedgeek	53	95	146	294
Startledbunny	122	114	48	284
Sean	69	93	122	284
RG	122	61	82	265
Jackie	50	69	48	167
Dank	156	0	0	156

Well done Sebastian for taking a commanding win this week! The strategy to go heavy on LMS shared drives was clearly the way to go as he picked up a whopping 236 points from that race alone, with the 2 Audi and 3 Peugeot drivers as well as Primat in the runner-up car.

Jon, Burwellian and James (edit – and myself) also picked up scores of 300 or more. EDIT – it should be noted the original post originally scored Sean at 252 and myself at 285.

Jackie’s gamble on the three Mansells didn’t pay off as they only came home 14th and picked up 16 points each. Dank hasn’t entered for some time but his 7 NASCAR rollover picks had a good week.

Week 11: Overall Standings – *revised*

Pos	Pre	+/-	Name	Prior	Wk 11	Total
1	2	1	Sebastian	2164	366	2530
2	1	-1	The Speedgeek	2166	294	2460
3	3	0	Pat W	2104	302	2406
4	4	0	RG	2086	265	2351
5	5	0	Sean	2047	284	2331
6	6	0	Jon Waldock	1990	320	2310
7	7	0	Burwellian	1950	310	2260
8	8	0	James	1912	300	2212
9	9	0	Startledbunny	1621	284	1905
10	10	0	Dank	1000	156	1156
11	11	0	Jackie	921	167	1088

Sebastian takes the lead! He’s now 70 points ahead of The Speedgeek. The rest of us are falling a little further back but the midfield battle is very close indeed. <del>Jon has overtaken Sean for 5th</del> while Burwellian and James have made up some ground on the pack. EDIT – Following the correction there are no further changes in position.

Week 12

This weekend we have F1 in China, IndyCar and ALMS at Long Beach, NASCAR at Texas, and WRC Turkey.

F1 – I’m not expecting a great race here to be honest, Shanghai isn’t a great track for racing but the long-term forecast is for rain so who knows what it might throw up?

IndyCar – The annual Long Beach classic can be quite fun, apart from when it isn’t! Like any street race, you can’t really predict who’ll get caught up in incidents or bang the wall, though you can probably expect fast Penske cars. So far this year though the rest of the order has been very competitive. Check indycar.com if you’re not familiar with the faces, that driver page is in championship order.

ALMS – Much the same as in IndyCar, the Long Beach race will be a case of avoiding the walls and other people’s incidents, except the prototypes will have GT cars to avoid, and vice versa. That said, it is a fairly short race by ALMS standards. You can access the entry list here. You’ll probably only need to pick from the LMP list unless you think there will be a lot of incidents.

NASCAR – Texas is a fast superspeedway. To be honest by this stage of the season I’ve given up watching this series so I don’t really know what their races are like on these tracks, I do know the IndyCar races here can be both scary and fun at the same time, but Cup cars aren’t as fast. Here is the current championship order, or see the finishing top ten above for a general guide, but being NASCAR any of 15-20 cars can score decent points.

WRC – Rally Turkey is a gravel event. I think it is quite hot. Erm, that’s about all I know. You can find the entry list here and the current points standings here.

I think that’s everything, any questions just ask in the comments, and good luck!