Fantasy Formula 1 2012

Come on. Own Up.

Who punched the new F1 cars in the face and broke their noses, eh?

 

Almost as quickly as you can say “If I see Vettel waving that sodding finger again I’m going to break it off and shove it up his exhaust flange” it’s nearly time for another year of Formula 1.

Which also means it’s time for another season of the leg end that is Fantasy Formula 1! Hurrah! (Waits for a few seconds) I said HURRAH! Thank you.

Whilst the McLaren seems to be the only car not to have fallen victim to a damn good whacking with the ugly stick, there is much to look forward to this year: Seeing if Seb can make the triple, six World Champions on the grid, finding out if Lewis is still drawn mysteriously towards Brazilians in red cars, if Kimi can put an entire sentence together that isn’t more effective than Nytol... Well, you get the idea.

Unless you’re watching on the BBC, of course. In which case, don’t read this for another 3 hours, then skip half of it.

Fancy your chances? Here’s what to do…

Tweet me (I'm @grumpyf1) by the end of Friday the 9^th of March (and NO exceptions this year!) with your two cars and two drivers. If someone else has entered the same team before you, you’ll have to change yours!

Rules and everything else you need to know follow. Jolly good luck. You’re going to need it...

Rules & Regs

 

2011 was the first year FF1 was launched via my blog and on twitter, as well as the usual email route. I’m terrified that I’ll get the FF1 equivalent of 200 people turning up at my house for a party whilst my parents are out, so after having a highest ever 30 entrants last year, I’m limiting the total number to 40 this year. Get your entry in pronto!

Your team budget is £30 million to buy two cars and two drivers from the list. Spend less and you’ll get 5 bonus points for every 1 million under-spent. Spend more and you’ll start the season in the red with 5 penalty points for each £1 million you overspend up to £5 million over. If your budget is MORE than £5 million over, for every million above the £5 million spent it’s 6 points off. If you spend more than £10 million over, its 7, More than £15 million its 8. And so on! For example, you could pair Vettel and Hamilton with a Red Bull and a Ferrari, but you’ll start the season with a whopping minus 520 points! Or you could gamble on Karthikeyan and Pic with a Marussia and an HRT, and start the season with 125 bonus points.

However, you can’t pick two identical cars, they have to be from different teams. You also can’t pick the same driver twice!

Your driver scores only when he is racing, and cars and drivers MUST be classified by the FIA as a finisher to score points. Substitute drivers do not count. If your driver loses his seat, he’s out of the championship: however, the rest of your team can still score. Likewise, if one of the teams decides they’ve bitten off more than they can chew and packs up and goes home, your drivers and your other car can still score. Car scores are based on the highest finishing machine of your chosen make only. There is also a bonus point for pole position.  Here’s how it works (all points apply to drivers and cars):

The Points

Win     25 points

2^nd       18 points

3^rd        15 points

4^th        12 points

5^th        10 points

6^th             8 points

7^th          6 points

8^th          4 points

9^th          2 points

10^th         1 point

 

 

Improvement Points

2 points for every place made up from start position. So if grid position 13 finishes in seventh, you get 18 points.

Qualifying Bonus Point

Pole position            1 point

In the case of a tie, the winner will be the person with the highest individual race score. In the case of any dispute about the rules, an FIA decision, or in fact anything really, my decision is final. It’s my game after all.

The Drivers	£M		The Cars	£M
Sebastien Vettel	22		Red Bull	22
Jenson Button	21		McLaren	21
Lewis Hamilton	19		Ferrari	20
Mark Webber	19		Mercedes	18
Fernando Alonso	19		Lotus	16
Felipe Massa	17		Force India	14
Nico Rosberg	16		Sauber	12
Michael Schumacher	15		Toro Rosso	10
Kimi Raikkonen	14		Williams	8
Kamui Kobayashi	13		Caterham	6
Paul di Resta	12		HRT	1
Nico Hulkenberg	11		Marussia	1
Sergio Perez	11
Bruno Senna	10
Romain Grosjean	9
Pastor Maldonado	8
Daniel Ricciardo	7
Jarno Trulli	7
Heikki Kovalainen	6
Jean-Eric Vergne	5
Pedro de la Rosa	4
Timo Glock	3
Narain Karthikeyan	2
Charles Pic	1

The Teams
TEAM	DRIVERS
McLaren	Jenson Button & Lewis Hamilton
Mercedes	Michael Schumacher & Nico Rosberg
Red Bull	Sebastien Vettel & Mark Webber
Ferrari	Fernando Alonso & Felipe Massa
Sauber	Kamui Kobayashi & Sergio Perez
Williams	Pastor Maldonado & Bruno Senna
Lotus	Kimi Raikkonen & Romain Grosjean
Force India	Paul di Resta & Nico Hulkenberg
Toro Rosso	Daniel Ricciardo & Jean-Eric Vergne
Caterham	Jarno Trulli & Heikki Kovalainen
Marussia	Timo Glock & Charles Pic
HRT	Narain Karthikayan & Pedro de la Rosa

The Races
March 18th	Australia (Melbourne)
March 25th	Malaysia (Sepang)
April 15th	China (Shanghai)
April 22nd	Bahrain (Sakhir)
May 13th	Spain (Montmelo)
May 27th	Monaco (Monte Carlo)
June 10th	Canada (Montreal)
June 24th	Europe (Valencia)
July 8th	Britain (Silverstone)
July 22nd	Germany (Hockenheim)
July 29th	Hungary (Hungaroring)
September 2nd	Belgium (Spa-Francorchamps)
September 9th	Italy (Monza)
September 23rd	Singapore (Singapore)
October 7th	Japan (Suzuka)
October 14th	Korea (Yeongam)
October 28th	India (New Delhi)
November 4th	Abu Dhabi (Yas Marina)
November 18th	United States (Austin)
November 25th	Brazil (Interlagos)

Do me a favour... (the small print)

 I need help. You may well have already noticed that (and whoever ordered me the straight jacket, thanks. It matches the padded walls beautifully).

A few weeks back I entered a competition in the North West Evening mail called “Big Blogger”. Remarkably, this involved Blogging. I’m not clear what the ‘Big’ was for, but hey – 50% counts as win in my book.

Basically, for 2 weeks I, and all the other entrants, blogged away via the paper’s website, and the 10 with the highest number of visits went through to the main competition. After that, one person gets dropped every week when the numbers are totalled up, until someone wins.

The prize is a laptop (Nice! I wouldn’t have to wind mine up any more!) but rather brilliantly, a column in the paper, every week, for a year. Just think of the damage I could do with THAT! Did I say damage? I meant good. Honest. Yes.

Anyway, I’ve somehow managed to get through the first week of 10, so there are now 9 of us left.

Here’s how you could help. I’d really like you to actually read the blogs, which I hope are amusing and thought provoking (although they might just be construed in court as random attacks on Range Rover and Wind Chime owners, snow obsessives and sundry other things I get annoyed about).

The number of hits I get in a week is cunningly constrained – the system counts only 1 hit per IP address per day. Handily, web-enable phones count also, but visiting 146 times in a day still only counts as 1 hit. I know. I’ve tried.

So here’s the pleading part – would you mind going and having a look by clicking this link? http://www.nwemail.co.uk/home/blogs/big-blogger/jenwis-hamilbutton-1.917210 If you could bookmark the page, and visit each day, that would really help.

Let me know what you think of the blogs, and I’ll let you know how I get on!

 Thanks – I really appreciate your help.