Archive for April, 2008

Round 4 - Spain

Sunday, April 27th, 2008

First things, that awful Heikki Kovalainen crash. The last reports said hes ok with no broken bones. Also respect to the guy for giving him the thumbs up while he was being taken to an Ambulance. From myself and everyone at FF1GP.com get well soon mate, and we look forward to seeing you behind the wheel again.

So hands up who was enjoying a Sangria with the Formula 1 today?

It was another great race today. A lot of the interesting action was down in the midfield today. Being a English person, you will find me supporting the British drivers, and it was excellent to see Jenson Button finishing in the points today, and of course Lewis Hamilton on the Podium.

What was more surprising was how close the top teams was in times, it was very close. The next race in Turkey, will be interesting. McLaren will have fresh engines, Ferrari will not. I think both teams will really go for it regardless of their engines, as the race afterwards is in Monaco. Why? Well in my opinion, Monaco is a slow circuit, you dont need a good engine to get around, you need a car that sticks like glue around the corners. Im sure you will have your own thoughts on this.

Now my email box has been a bit busy over the last week over the subject of Super Aguri. The team is in financial trouble, due to the Magna group pulling out of buy-out talks, and it was looking like they would not be able to make the Spanish Grand Prix, however Honda stepped in to help them out.

The question that everyone has asked me, what if Super Aguri do not make the race, what happens to my points?

The answer is you get no points, which includes prediction points, even for predicting a DNF. The rules state:-

“To score any points for DNF positions, the driver or team must at least turn up for the 1st qualifying session of the race weekend.”

However I did ask anyone who did ask me about the rules, do you think this rule is ok?

Now I was expecting a mix bag of responses, or a huge response saying Give us our DNF prediction points.

In fact all the responses said on the lines of Nil points Here are some of the responses I got.

“Why should people be able to score points based on a sure thing. Also surely this was part of the risk they ran picking the cheapest team?”

And I had this very honest reply from one of the players.

“With Super Aguri as one of my teams and Anthony Davidson as one of my drivers I should be saying yes to DNF regardless. But my sense of fair play says no.; if they don’t turn up for qualifying, there are no points for predicting DNF.”

And also this Player said “(I have a) bias towards any rule that helps me score more points. :)” but ended his email saying “P.S. Although ‘bonus points’ do suggest there needs to be some sort of skill or judgement involved to get ‘em.”

A big thanks to everyone who took their time to respond, and for now the prediction rules stand.

However one thing that was asked, How can I trade my team or driver if they go bust The answer is you cant but it may be something I will look into for the 2009/2010 season.

Next stop, Turkey!

Round 3 - Bahrain

Sunday, April 6th, 2008

Another race down, a strong comeback by Ferrari, and also a strong performance by BMW in Bahrain, it was a yet another cracking race to watch!

The next race is in Spain, which I have great memories from last year when I attended the race, along with quite few members of one of the leagues here. If you look closely pictures on the front page, 3 of the pictures where taken at the Spanish Grand Prix in 2007 by myself.

News from the FF1GP site, it’s running well. It looks like the small glitches from the 1st and 2nd round have been ironed out.

One question that I do get often from league owners one the lines of “Team X in my league has zero points, yet he got 34 points what’s going wrong?” First thing, it’s not a bug with the site. When you enter a league, it only counts points from the round you have entered the league before the day of the race. The reason for this is to stop team owners from jumping in and bringing their points to bump their place up the league.

However sometimes teams are a little late entering a league, and league owners want their points counted from the last race, or previous races. If you got a team that needs their points counted here is what to do.

1. View the team in question and decide which round their points should be counted from.

2. As the league owner, send an email to me (admin@ff1gp.com) with the league name, the team name, and which round you want the points counted from.

3. Once I get the email, I’ll adjust the team’s joining round and the league scores to reflect the points score.

In future, league owners will be able to adjust the joining round to a earlier round of a member.

See you all in Spain!