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TMR Game – Week 10

Welcome to Week 10 of the Too Much Racing Game!

Apologies for my recent absence and I hope it wasn’t a hindrance, and thanks to Sebastian for compiling some unofficial results for last week! You’ll be pleased to hear I agree with his figures, I will include them here in case you didn’t see the link to those results so in this post you’ll see results from the last two weeks.

Just a word of warning, this is a WRC week and that means an early cut-off. The rally actually runs from Thursday to Saturday. I think it is quite harsh to have everyone pick by Thursday morning especially since I was slightly delayed with this post, so I propose a closing point of 6am UK time Friday morning (11 minutes before that day’s running begins). This does mean people entering Thursday will have a distinct advantage but I don’t know what else to suggest. Thoughts?

Quick-Start

Racing this week:
F1 – Malaysian Grand Prix;
WRC – Rally Jordan;

All you have to do is reply to this post and pick up to 10 drivers! The only limit? No more than 7 in one race.

The cutoff is the morning of Friday 2nd April at 5.59am BST (British Summer Time = GMT+1).

For the full results from Weeks 8 and 9, read on.

Continue reading “TMR Game – Week 10”

Thoughts on F1: Bahrain GP

Preface

In 2008 and 2009 I wrote detailed Race Reviews of each F1 race, and some IndyCar and GP2 races, featuring my reaction to events as they unfolded, which I’d taken as short notes then wrote up more fully. These were moderately popular but took a lot of work and I felt I wasn’t enjoying it any more, so for 2010 I’ve decided to give a more loose account of my general impression from each race.

Here is my reaction to the Bahrain GP which I wrote on the Tuesday after the race while away from the internet during my break in Spain. I guarantee I have not edited this so I’m pretty happy Melbourne turned out well! Thoughts on Australia will follow on Wednesday, and similar posts about IndyCar or GP2 or other races may follow eventually depending on time I have available.

Thoughts on F1 – 2010 Bahrain GP

A lot has been said about how boring the Bahrain GP was… so I thought I’d add to it. Since I was watching without live timing and limited access to online discussions – I’m normally all over these like a rash during any big race – I wondered if I was just missing the extra layer of information the internet brings.

Turns out most agreed with me, the race was a snoozefest. Now – you’re going to tell me I wrote about this a few weeks ago. ‘All races are interesting in some way’, was the message wasn’t it?

I did say that, and I acknowledged at the time that you’re always going to get the odd bad race, my main argument was people were calling races boring when they were just looking at them wrongly. I said Valencia ’08 and Abu Dhabi ’09 were exceptions to that because they were dull. We can add Bahrain 2010 to that list.

Prior to the event I’d suspected it would be a bad one after they announced it would be run on the 24-hour course, the tight twisty slow section. I’m sure they did this in response to claims the other layout was stop/start and not challenging enough – what those critics missed is that actually it wasn’t that bad, perhaps below-average but not awful. The extension made it worse by creating field-spread excacerbated by new rules which were always going to do that anyway.

I think future events will be a little better. Albert Park will be its usual self, then Shanghai and Barcelona are always boring but there will be those who pin that on the new rules too.

The problem isn’t with the fuel rules – they’ve brought even more into focus a problem most of us acknowledged in 2009 after several boring races then – the cars cannot pass each other. The new-for-09 aerodynamic rules closed up the laptimes but they did not help overtaking. This is why last year qualifying was usually more fun than the race. Unfortunately there are no quick-fixes. Adding a mandatory second stop may help a bit but as we’ve seen in DTM you’re going to have to bring in pit windows as well to prevent pitting in say the first and last 5 laps. And in DTM the drivers still wait for the stops.

The other problem is teams are preoccupied with saving engines and gearboxes for the next race. I don’t think that makes for good racing. I’m fine with saving fuel and saving tyres as long as the entire field isn’t doing it, if it is a legitimate strategy versus someone pushing.

I’m less interested in ‘turning the engine down’ just so it can be used again. I’m hoping that engines and gearboxes will be developed enough within the restrictions to eventually be able to be pushed and still last a few races.

I enjoy sportscar racing because this is where this type of fuel and tyre ‘conservation’ racing works best – over a really long race lasting many hours, the car with the best mix of speed and reliability will theoretically win. Is it suited to a 90-minute F1 race? I guess we’ll find out over the season but it doesn’t look good so far.

The other thing to note – perhaps this was a dry run while teams test out the rules to see what the limits are? Will they be as conservative by the time we get to Barcelona or will they feel more free to be creative?

I haven’t mentioned the actual performances yet. Vettel’s pace was very impressive until the car problem, and both Ferraris weren’t far behind, I hope we aren’t in for a dominant season from the trio. I thought the McLarens were supposed to be on top? Special mention for Lotus and Virgin for not looking totally hopeless, things look promising in the long-term. HRT… the jury is out but they did a professional job to test the car while staying out of everyone’s way, and they have a LOT of work to do. And a completely anonymous race for M.Schumacher…

Results

1. Fernando Alonso (Ferrari)  49 laps
2. Felipe Massa (Ferrari) +16.0s
3. Lewis Hamilton (McLaren) +23.1s
4. Sebastian Vettel (Red Bull) +38.7s
5. Nico Rosberg (Mercedes) +40.2s
6. Michael Schumacher (Mercedes) +44.1s
7. Jenson Button (McLaren) +45.2s
8. Mark Webber (Red Bull) +46.3s
9. Vitantonio Liuzzi (Force India) +53.0s
10. Rubens Barrichello (Williams) +62.4s
11. Robert Kubica (Renault) +69.0s
12. Adrian Sutil (Force India) +82.9s
13. Jaime Alguersuari (Toro Rosso) +92.6s
14. Nico Hulkenberg (Williams) + 1 lap
15. Heikki Kovalainen (Lotus) + 2 laps
16. Sebastien Buemi (Toro Rosso) +3 laps
R. Pedro de la Rosa (Sauber)  hydraulics
R. Bruno Senna (Hispania) hydraulics
R. Timo Glock (Virgin) mechanical
R. Vitaly Petrov (Renault) gearbox
R. Kamui Kobayashi (Sauber) hydraulics
R. Lucas di Grassi (Virgin) hydraulics
R. Karun Chandhok (Hispania) accident

A lot of hydraulic problems in there. I won’t include a driver points table because it is the same as the top ten. I’m not sure whether to include results and points going forwards..

Constructors

1. Ferrari 43 pts
2. McLaren 21
3. Mercedes 18
4. Red Bull 16
5. Force India 2
6. Williams 1

TMR Game – Week 9

Welcome to Week 9 of the Too Much Racing Game!

I hope you enjoyed Sebring and Bristol, those who saw or listened to it!

There will be no results this week, I am presently travelling back to the UK from a holiday in Spain (this post was written last week!). I could update this post but then I can’t be sure everyone will see them and I don’t want to do two posts in one week, neither do I want to delay the entry, so I’ll do a double-dose next week.

Quick-Start

Racing this week:
Formula 1 – Australian Grand Prix, Albert Park, Melbourne, Australia;
IndyCar – St Petersburg, Florida, USA;
NASCAR Cup – Martinsville, Virginia, USA;

All you have to do is reply to this post and pick up to 10 drivers! The only limit? No more than 7 in one race.

The cutoff is Friday 28th March at 11.59pm GMT. Call it midnight Friday night. Good luck! Please note that Europe changes to Summer time on Sunday morning – check your timezones. That goes for everyone, just be sure.

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 from each race, any combination of up to 10 drivers is accepted.

Further information can be found on the  game sub-page.

Week 9

There are THREE events this week.

F1 – Australian GP

Bahrain wasn’t a brilliant demo of the new rules, but Albert Park always throws up an oddity of a race so let’s hope it does so this year.

IndyCar – St Petersburg

A visit to Florida and the part-street part-airport circuit in St Pete.

NASCAR Cup – Martinsville

I’m not sure what to say about this one because I tend to lose interest in NASCAR by this stage of the season, when F1 and IndyCar have kicked off, so I’ve never actually seen a race from here.

Further Info

I will be back home at about 9pm UK time. I don’t think I’ll be doing much with the game until tomorrow night, I’ll address any issues then.

Good luck!

TMR Game – Week 8

Welcome to Week 8 of the Too Much Racing Game!

The F1 and IndyCar openers are done and dusted, one was incredibly boring and I hear the other was very exciting although I didn’t get to see it – I’ll catch it another time.

A word of warning – I am out of the country from Wednesday morning until Tuesday evening, so I probably won’t be able to check entries this week or provide scores next week. I’ll schedule an entry post for next Tuesday as normal and you’ll get two sets of results the following week. I’ll check tomorrow at the airport wifi but that may be it!

The other thing is a request for feedback: it was brought up on the Game page that perhaps Okayama may be too obscure a race. I think we’ll see some familiar drivers from the LMS and ALMS there but it may be a valid point. Do we lose it? The other thing was the Macau F3 GP – what do people say to including that, would it add an element of unpredictability to the final week of the game since the only there at the moment is the last NASCAR race, or is it too obscure also?

Quick-Start

Racing this week:
American Le Mans Series – 12 Hours of Sebring, Florida, USA;
NASCAR Sprint Cup – Bristol, Tennessee, USA;

All you have to do is reply to this post and pick up to 10 drivers! The only limit? No more than 7 in one race.

The cutoff is Friday 19th March at 11.59pm GMT. Call it midnight Friday night. Good luck! American/Canadian players entering Friday please note that although you’ve switched to Summer time Europe hasn’t yet – check your timezones.

For the full results from Week 7, read on.

Continue reading “TMR Game – Week 8”