Hello!

Next stop: Canada. Will the wall of the champions claim new victims? How many engines will McLaren need to get themselves through the weekend? Will Ralf manage a race without an incident? How about JPM? Who'll whine first and does he have a point? What will Ruby's excuse be this time?

While wondering about that and a thousand other things, try your hand at these:

The rules of the game remain unchanged, but since it appears that there's some confusion as to how I actually apply them, I've composed a new and hopefully improved rules post (see post 3 in this thread). It should read better than the original mess.

Deadline: anything that's posted and/or edited before pre-qualifying is OK.

The preferred format for the guesses is 122 XXX 12X XX1 but basically anything that makes sense is just fine.

Good luck!


PS. New players continue to be welcome. It may be a bit late to win the championship if you only start now, but you can still humiliate and piss off the regulars in individual rounds. That can be great fun.

XX1 2XX XX1 X21

You can skip this if you already know the rules!

There’s been some confusion about the game rules, which is probably my fault for not making a better effort with the original rules post. I did plan on refining the thing a bit to make it more readable/understandable but somehow I never got round to it. Until now, that is. So here you go,

The Rules - 2nd Ed.:

The game in a nutshell: I choose team vs team duels (qualifying and race separately), you guess the outcome (1X2). Both reliability and pace need to be considered when rating a team’s performance in relation to its duel opponent according to the principles laid out below.

Every car/driver combo that either sets a time in qualifying or finishes the race counts towards a duel outcome. Note: they should actually reach the checquered flag, simply being classified isn't good enough. Failures to set a qualifying time and/or finish the race can and will be used against a team - assuming their opponent fares any better in the reliability department. More on that below.

Here's a summary of how various race results translate into duel outcomes:


* If you can’t beat them on track, you can still earn charity points for better reliability. To punish evil one-car operations, a finishing order ABB (team A wins on pace, B on reliability) translates into an X because this is supposed to be a team sport and there are 2 cars in a team. However, an AB finish does not warrant a punishment for unreliability because team A hasn’t done any worse than team B in that respect. Hence the A vs B duel outcome is 1 (A wins on pace, no one on reliability).

** No unreliabilty punishments for draws. An ABA result is an X and a mission accomplished for team B in that they’ve managed to beat one of their opponents on track.

2X1 1X2 221 X22

221 1X1 XX1 1XX

221 X2X X21 221

XXX XXX XXX XXX

2X1 XX2 221 X22


...
"12 Williams - Renault "
...

quite nice...

2X1 XX2 221 X22

22X 1XX 12X XX1

221 1XX 221 X2X

221 XXX 221 XXX

2X1 X22 1X1 X22

2X1 XXX 121 1X2

221 XXX X21 X2X

2X1 X2X X21 XXX

2x1 xxx x21 xxx

2X1 XXX X21 X22

2X1 XXX 221 XXX

221 1XX X21 XXX

221 X2X 221 X2X

221
xxx
221
xx2

221 XXX 221 22X

221 X2X 121 X22

221 2XX X21 2X2

221 XXX 221 XX2

2x1 xxx x21 xx2

221 XXX X21 X21

221 XXX 221 X2X

221 12X 221 122

221 X2X 221 22X

2X1 1XX 221 XX2

2X1 XX2 X21 222

22X XXX 222 X2X

2X1 XXX 2X1 2XX

221 XXX 221 X22

OK, I'll be away for a week, so I'll post my guess for the US GP here... I hope the following makes sense ("home team" in bold, swap 1 for 2 and vice versa depending on your match listing) :

Ferrari -
BAR X in qualifying, 1 in race
Renault X 1
Williams 1 1
Sauber 1 1
McLaren 1 1
Toyota 1 1
Jaguar 1 1
Jordan 1 1
Minardi 1 1

BAR -
Renault 1 X
Williams X 1
Sauber 1 1
McLaren 1 1
Toyota 1 1
Jaguar 1 1
Jordan 1 1
Minardi 1 1

Renault -
Williams X X
Sauber 1 1
McLaren 1 1
Toyota 1 1
Jaguar 1 1
Jordan 1 1
Minardi 1 1

Williams -
Sauber 1 X
McLaren X 1
Toyota 1 1
Jaguar 1 1
Jordan 1 1
Minardi 1 1

Sauber -
McLaren 2 1
Toyota X X
Jaguar X 1
Jordan 1 1
Minardi 1 1

McLaren -
Toyota 1 X
Jaguar 1 X
Jordan 1 X
Minardi 1 1

Toyota -
Jaguar X X
Jordan 1 1
Minardi 1 1

Jaguar -
Jordan 1 X
Minardi 1 1

Jordan - Minardi 1 1

221 XXX 221 X22

221 221 221 X2X

221 X1X X21 12X