Hello and welcome to TMR Game Week 21.
After a busy week we’re back to some semblance of normality this week. This post accepts entries for these 3 events:
– IndyCar Milwaukee
– DTM Lausitz
– NASCAR Cup Michigan
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
| Wk 20 | Le Mans | Formula 1 | MotoGP | NASCAR Cup |
| Pts | Le Mans | Montreal | Silverstone | Pocono |
| 50 | #2 Audi | Jenson Button | Casey Stoner | Jeff Gordon |
| 40 | #9 Peugeot | Sebastian Vettel | Andrea Dovizioso | Kurt Busch |
| 35 | #8 Peugeot | Mark Webber | Colin Edwards | Kyle Busch |
| 32 | #7 Peugeot | M. Schumacher | Nicky Hayden | Jimmie Johnson |
| 30 | #10 ORECA | Vitaly Petrov | Alvara Bautista | Kevin Harvick |
| 28 | #12 Rebellion | Felipe Massa | Valentino Rossi | Dale Jr |
| 26 | #22 Kronos | Kamui Kobayashi | Karel Abraham | Juan Montoya |
| 24 | #41 Greaves | Jaime Alguersuari | Toni Elias | Matt Kenseth |
| 22 | #26 Signatech | Rubens Barrichello | Hiroshi Aoyama | Ryan Newman |
| 20 | #33 Level 5 | Sebastien Buemi | Loris Capirossi | Martin Truex Jr |
| IndyCar | IndyCar | |||
| Half Pts | Texas Race 1 | Texas Race 2 | ||
| 25 | Dario Franchitti | Will Power | ||
| 20 | Scott Dixon | Scott Dixon | ||
| 17.5 (18) | Will Power | Ryan Briscoe | ||
| 16 | Alex Tagliani | Helio Castroneves | ||
| 15 | Takuma Sato | Tony Kanaan | ||
| 14 | Ryan Briscoe | Marco Andretti | ||
| 13 | EJ Viso | Dario Franchitti | ||
| 12 | Vitor Meira | Danica Patrick | ||
| 11 | Graham Rahal | Ryan Hunter-Reay | ||
| 10 | H. Castroneves | EJ Viso |
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Scores This Week
| Player | Le Mans | F1 | MotoGP | NASCAR Cup | IndyCar R1 | IndyCar R2 | Week 20 |
| Ryan | – | 104 | 106 | – | 63 | 58 | 331 |
| Startledbunny | 40 | 75 | 66 | 33 | 43 | 38 | 295 |
| The Speedgeek | 75 | 81 | 66 | – | 34 | 38 | 294 |
| Sebastian X | 0 | 104 | 66 | – | 59 | 51 | 280 |
| Pat W | 67 | 81 | 90 | – | 25 | 13 | 276 |
| Felipe Gana | 67 | 131 | 66 | 11 | – | – | 275 |
| James | 35 | 48 | 66 | 43 | 45 | 33 | 270 |
| RubberGoat | 157 | 46 | 66 | – | – | – | 269 |
| Dylanpt24 | 35 | 40 | 81 | 41 | 29 | 26 | 252 |
| Sean | 75 | 96 | 66 | 11 | – | – | 248 |
| Jackie | 32 | 73 | 107 | – | – | – | 212 |
| Maverick | 0 | 54 | 138 | – | – | – | 192 |
| The Crooked Cap | 0 | 54 | 66 | 44 | – | – | 164 |
| No Entry: 80% of lowest score | |||||||
| Jay | 131 | ||||||
| Mike Rice | 131 |
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Congratulations to Ryan who for the second year running proves that avoiding Le Mans picks can bear fruit when the popular runners retire early! The loss of the #1 and #3 Audis really hurt everyone else, but we’d have struggled to beat Ryan even then. The only person to get a decent Le Mans score was RubberGoat who’d pick all the works diesels.
Seems the Stoner/Lorenzo combination was very popular, witness all those with 66pts. F1 was a disappointment for many with Alonso and Hamilton going out. IndyCar netted some useful points for many, whilst Cup only netted a few token picks.
Commiserations to Cap and Maverick who had terrible luck this week! They had identical F1 and LM picks, but Mav’s extra MotoGP selections saved him from the bottom, meaning The Crooked Cap was more like The Wooden Spoon..
Do check the more detailed sheet produced by Sebastian which this week features a great table showing each driver’s scores from the two IndyCar races.
Leaderboard
| Pos | Pre | +/- | Name | Prior | Wk 20 | Total | + |
| 1 | 1 | 0 | Sean | 4127 | 248 | 4375 | |
| 2 | 2 | 0 | Sebastian X | 4039 | 280 | 4319 | 56 |
| 3 | 3 | 0 | RubberGoat | 3903 | 269 | 4172 | 147 |
| 4 | 4 | 0 | Pat W | 3867 | 276 | 4143 | 29 |
| 5 | 5 | 0 | Felipe Gana | 3850 | 275 | 4125 | 18 |
| 6 | 6 | 0 | The Speedgeek | 3764 | 294 | 4058 | 67 |
| 7 | 7 | 0 | Startledbunny | 3727 | 295 | 4022 | 36 |
| 8 | 10 | 2 | James | 3681 | 270 | 3951 | 71 |
| 9 | 11 | 2 | Dylanpt24 | 3678 | 252 | 3930 | 21 |
| 10 | 13 | 3 | Ryan | 3593 | 331 | 3924 | 6 |
| 11 | 9 | -2 | Jackie | 3686 | 212 | 3898 | 26 |
| 12 | 8 | -4 | Maverick | 3704 | 192 | 3896 | 2 |
| 13 | 12 | -1 | The Crooked Cap | 3658 | 164 | 3822 | 74 |
| 14 | 14 | 0 | Jay | 3423 | 131 | 3554 | 268 |
| 15 | 15 | 0 | Mike Rice | 2907 | 131 | 3038 | 516 |
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Sean didn’t have quite such a good week so the lead is cut to 56 points, suddenly it looks like a catchable margin!
It was actually fairly tight in the midfield scoring this week, ‘Geek and ‘Bunny both made another points gain on the trio ahead of them (that’s Speedgeek’s third consecutive week reeling group I’m in).
No position changes until 8th where all hell broke loose. James and Dylan are up two spots, next up is Ryan who gains 3 places with his big win. These three gain at the expense of Jackie, Mav and Crooked Cap. There are still only 55 points between James and Crooked Cap so that group has a lot of fun ahead of them!
Feel free to point out anything I might have missed here!
Upcoming Races
Three races:
IndyCar – Milwaukee
The great little Milwaukee Mile, the historic track which doesn’t always get the recognition it deserves. I love this race.
DTM: Lausitz
In a series of fairly boring races this may top them all… I wish they’d convert the cars to oval-spec for one race per year, the infield track isn’t great.
http://www.dtm.com/index.php?lang=en&
NASCAR Cup: Michigan
The season’s first visit to the 2-mile oval.
Good luck!
I Watch Too Much Racing 
That was a difficult week to do well, and an easy week to do badly.
It will stink to hell if Power beats Franchitti to the title with the points gained in race two at Texas. I saw a clip of Power looking so jubilant when he drew third for the second grid, which looked very ungracious since he just lucked it, and it makes his first oval win less than valid. I can understand Randy Bernard wanting to pep up the show, but why not make the second race a non-points event, maybe with race one for the points and race two for the prize money, which would avoid the risk of turning the title into a travesty whilst still maintaining the promotional advantage?
DTM:
Bruno Spengler
Gary Paffett
Timo Scheider
Jamie Green
Martin Tomczyk
Indycar:
Scott Dixon
Dario Franchitti
Ryan Briscoe
Tony Kanaan
NASCAR:
Carl Edwards
56 points divided by the 24 remaining weeks of this competition is 2.33333333333333…
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What a painful week. I could live with the two Le Mans retirees – there was a certain inevitability that I’d end up picking the early victims and sure enough the #2 won. The loss of 3 bikers on what should have been a straightforward 1-2-3-4-5 is what really hurt.
IndyCar:
Scott Dixon
Dario Franchitti
Will Power
Graham Rahal
Tony Kanaan
DTM:
Bruno Spengler
Martin Tomczyk
Timo Scheider
Ralf Schumacher
Mattias Ekstrom
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Indycar
Dario Franchitti
Scott Dixon
Will Power
Oriol Servia
DTM
Martin Tomczyk
Bruno Spengler
Ralf Schumacher
NASCAR
Carl Edwards
Jimmie Johnson
Dale Earnhardt Jr
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Tom Kristensen is replacing Mike Rockenfeller at the Lausitzring.
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IndyCar
Dario Franchitti
Scott Dixon
Will Power
Ryan Briscoe
Tony Kanaan
NASCAR
Jimmie Johnson
Carl Edwards
Kevin Harvick
DTM
Bruno Spengler
Ralf Schumacher
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Indycar: Will Power, Tony Kanaan, Helio Castroneves, Danica, Alex Tagliani
NASCAR: Jeff Gordon, Carl Edwards, Kevin Harvick, Kyle Busch, Greg Biffle
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I agree with Sebastian completely about Indy and Texas. Power still hasn’t proven to me he can win on an oval straight up without assistance and his excitement was a little cheesy (although considerably less so than Castroneves and Kanaan when they were doing their little Brazilian metrosexual dance). What shocked me is how predictable it ended up being, and that’s where I got burned last week. I kind of expected the second race to have loads of crashes with the less experienced drivers crashing right in front of front-runners and so on. It SHOCKED the hell out of me that it went caution-free.
DTM: Kristensen, Spengler, Tomczyk
IndyCar: Briscoe, Dixon, Franchitti
Cup: Ky. Busch, Edwards, Johnson, Kenseth
Michigan’s about as predictable as NASCAR racing can get. I think I’m safe going Cup-heavy this time. Yet again I almost picked David Ragan but chickened out. Somebody might get a sweet deal from him though the way he’s run on cookie-cutters like Texas and Charlotte and considering Michigan might as well be the Roush Motor Speedway…
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Ooh this could be a tough week which may change the standings. I had a 50/50 last week – either my drivers did really well or they didn’t finish at all…
My picks:
DTM
1. Paffett
2. Spengler
3. Tomczyk
4. Scheider
IndyCar:
5. Dixon
6. Franchitti
7. Kanaan
8. Power
NASCAR:
9. Jimmie Johnson
10. Kevin Harvick
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Hopefully I can’t do any worse than I did last week, but yiou never know!
DTM:
Bruno Spengler
Timo Scheider
Martin Tomczyk
Ralph Schumacher (yes I did say Ralph 😛 )
Indycar:
Scott Dixon
Dario Franchitti
Will Power
NASCAR:
Jimmie Johnson
Kevin Harvick
Carl Edwards
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It was senseless to me to have a draw for a championship points race. I think if they keep it next year we’ll be ignoring it for the game, but it looks like Bernard is saying it’ll turn into a reversal of race 1’s finishing order next year. I’m slightly happier about that but to be honest reverse grids should be the preserve of junior open wheel series and touring cars, not in a snobbish way at all, they are just better-suited to those series.
Race 1 was always going to be about car preservation (see also A1GP), though I agree
with Sean about expecting a crash-fest in a ‘go for glory’ race 2.
I only saw the first of the two but the original 550k race format seemed much more interesting, let’s go back to that.
Seems Milwaukee could be the only unpredictable race this week then.
DTM: Spengler, Scheider, Tomczyk, Schumacher (Paffett should be a ‘go to’ pick but he’s struggling for points and Ralfie is riding high, let’s see what happens);
Cup: Edwards, Kenseth, Harvick
IndyCar: Power (let’s see his first ‘real’ oval win), Franchitti (good everywhere), Wilson (due a decent run);
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Once again I am highly smug after Le Mans… won’t keep it up.
DTM: Spengler, Tomczyk, Schumacher
NASCAR: Harvick, Edwards
IndyCar: Power, Franchitti, Hunter-Reay, Kanaan, Rahal.
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If I could ever commit myself to a keyboard for more than 10 minutes at a stretch, I’d write an 8,000 word post about how the fact that for half points races like the Twin 275s, everybody from 18th on back scores either 6 or 5 points, and so a full field inversion for Race 2 is liable to produce an absolute farce of a “race” in Race 1(everybody outside of the top-10 will be tempted to park first, in order to get pole for Race 2). Also, I think that BTCC has shown us that inverting any number of cars within the top-10 and leaving spots 11 on back the same only produces a subtly different top-10, and no more (any top-6-8-or-10 field inversion would have probably have given us another Ganassi redwash in Race 2 last weekend, anyway). I’ll pass on both of those scenarios. I find it hard to believe this, but I think Curt Cavin’s Trackside segment about it last night talked me back into the random draw for next year…
Meanwhile, the task at hand:
IndyCar:
Scott Dixon
Ryan Briscoe
Dario Franchitti
Tony Kanaan
Graham Rahal
DTM:
Jamie Green
Bruno Spengler
Timo Scheider
NASCAR Cup:
Matt Kenseth
Biff Riffle
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Here goes nothing….
DTM
Kristensen (sentimental pick)
Gary Paffett
Bruno Spengler
Indycar
Scott Dixon
Dario Franchitti
Marco Andretti
Ryan Briscoe
NASCAR
Carl Edwards
Jimmie Johnson
Marcos Ambrose (rolling the dice, yea baby!*)
*apologies, I don’t know what came over me……
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