TMR Game 2011 – Week 19 – I Watch Too Much Racing

Hello and welcome to TMR Game Week 19.

This post accepts entries for these 3 events:

– MotoGP Catalunya
– DTM Spielberg Red Bull Ring (old A1-Ring)
– NASCAR Cup Kansas

Housekeeping

Each week you pick 10 entries with a maximum of 7 of those coming from a single championship. You can have any mix of races from those listed in this post, and you don’t have to use all of them.

See this page for the game rules.

Email reminders will be sent on Thursdays or Fridays by either myself or Sebastian. Please leave a valid email address in the comment form. If you do not wish to receive reminders please let us know, otherwise we’ll assume we’re okay to send them. Also let us know (privately if you prefer) if you would like to use a different address to the one you use here. I may also use Twitter or other sites if I happen to see you there on Thursday or Friday.

Scores

Week 18	*Formula 1*	*IndyCar*	NASCAR Cup
Points	Monaco	Indianapolis	Charlotte
50	Sebastian Vettel	Dan Wheldon	Kevin Harvick
40	Fernando Alonso	JR Hildebrand	David Ragan
35	Jenson Button	Graham Rahal	Joey Logano
32	Mark Webber	Tony Kanaan	Kurt Busch
30	Kamui Kobayashi	Scott Dixon	AJ Allmendinger
28	Lewis Hamilton	Oriol Servia	Marcos Ambrose
26	Adrian Sutil	Bertrand Baguette	Dale Earnhardt Jr
24	Nick Heidfeld	Tomas Scheckter	Regan Smith
22	Rubens Barrichello	Marco Andretti	David Reutimann
20	Sebastien Buemi	Danica Patrick	Denny Hamlin

Scores This Week

*Player*	F1	*IndyCar*	*NASCAR*	*Week 18*
The Speedgeek	209	121	0	330
Felipe Gana	185	97	0	282
Sean	145	110	15	270
Sebastian X	204	61	2	267
James	150	85	30	265
RubberGoat	185	79	0	264
Pat W	185	78	0	263
Maverick	193	66	0	259
Jackie	177	77	0	254
Ryan	178	53	0	231
Dylanpt24	110	87	32	229
Startledbunny	145	66	16	227
Jay	213	0	0	213
*No Entry Received: 80% of lowest score*
Mike Rice				182
The Crooked Cap				182

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Wow, a fantastic score for The Speedgeek, nice one Andy! The combination of not relying on Ganassi/Penske (primary teams) as well as picking 5 of the top 6 from Monaco was clearly a good one.

Sean and Sebastian again feature in the top four, still making it hard for the rest of us to catch up. It could be noted that Sebastian would’ve beaten Sean by two points had he stuck with Heidfeld instead of changing to Rosberg, but who expected Rosberg to drop back like that?

Quite a few were hit by poor results from hotly-tipped runners in the Indy 500, and again some in the Coca-Cola 600.

I took the 80% score from the lowest full entry of ten drivers rather than Jay’s seven F1 drivers, as that strikes me as being the fairest thing to do. That means Crooked Cap and Mike get 182 rather than 170.

Do check the more detailed sheet produced by Sebastian.

Leaderboard

Pos	Pre	+/-	Name	Prior	Wk 18	Total	+
1	1	0	Sean	3531	270	3801
2	2	0	Sebastian X	3463	267	3730	71
3	3	0	RubberGoat	3341	264	3605	125
4	4	0	Pat W	3311	263	3574	31
5	5	0	Felipe Gana	3266	282	3548	26
6	11	5	The Speedgeek	3123	330	3453	95
7	6	-1	James	3182	265	3447	6
8	7	-1	Startledbunny	3161	227	3388	59
9	10	1	Jackie	3132	254	3386	2
10	12	2	Maverick	3121	259	3380	6
11	9	-2	Dylanpt24	3143	229	3372	8
12	8	-4	The Crooked Cap	3159	182	3341	31
13	13	0	Ryan	3046	231	3277	64
14	14	0	Jay	2976	213	3189	88
15	15	0	Mike Rice	2491	182	2673	516

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The Speedgeek jumps up a fantastic five places! He now heads that big group fighting over 6th position and another good result will see him close on the group ahead.

The VivaF1 pair of Jackie and Mav made up positions to sit inside the top ten.

Up front, Sean’s lead is now 71 points over Sebastian. Rubbergoat and I hold steady but Felipe is closing in.

Question

We’re coming up quickly on the Texas round of the IndyCar Series, which poses a problem. Rather than run a single 500km race as in the past, they’ve split it into 2 x 275s and they say they’ll award half-points for each segment, yet treat each race win as a race win. That’s contradictory to me and maybe my facts are out of date. But it leads to a question:

Question – When it comes to the TMR Game, should I award half points or full points to each of the two parts?

I’d be interested in your take. I already have an opinion on this but I want to know what you think.

Upcoming Races

There are another three races this weekend, though I suspect the picks will be a little more predictable this time around. I have to say… there’s a great big hole here where the Milwaukee IndyCar race should be. It had better be back next year.

MotoGP: Catalunya

Just two weeks after F1 visited Barcelona it holds another Grand Prix, this time of the two-wheeled kind. A year ago this featured an amazing battle for the win, can it do it again this year or will it revert to a semblance of normality?

www.motogp.com

DTM: Spielberg

The long-awaited return of the Austrian circuit formerly known as the A1-Ring and the Osterreichring before that. The rebuilt Red Bull Ring has had millions poured into it from the energy drinks giant to bring it up to spec again and I’m so pleased a fairly major series is visiting it so soon.

http://www.dtm.com/index.php?lang=en&

NASCAR Cup: Kansas

After the fuss of the Coca-Cola 600 and the fortnight at Charlotte it is back to the regular weekly grind, it just never seems to stop for a break! I get all these 1.5-milers mixed up but I think I like Kansas as an IndyCar track, hopefully it produces good Cup races too.

www.nascar.com

Good luck!

17 thoughts on “TMR Game 2011 – Week 19”

This is somewhat a place-holder entry. I await fitness news for Pedrosa, and other factors might change my choices.

DTM:
Bruno Spengler
Gary Paffett
Timo Scheider
Mattias Ekström
Jamie Green

MotoGP:
Jorge Lorenzo
Dani Pedrosa
Casey Stoner
Andrea Dovizioso
Valentino Rossi

If we treat the Texas Indycar event as two distinct races, then presumably that would mean nominating drivers separately for race-one and race-two in what is already a five-event week (and could lead to problems if somebody posts their entry late in the week without being aware they have to specify for which of the two races). What about we average the TMRG points for both legs, thus if a driver finishs second and eleventh, that is (40+19)/2 = 29.5, which would be rounded up to 30? The rounding up would slightly improve the total of scores for all drivers, but that would be counteracted by any drivers that crashed in leg-one and were unable to start leg-two, thus getting zero for the second leg and scoring less points than if they had crashed early in a single-race event. Alternately, we could just pick one race and ignore the other. (If it was not for the random grid for leg-two, I would suggest treating it all as one race with a break.) Leg-one has normal qualification so we could just score that.

There is information on the format here.