One year and four months ago, fourteen members of this forum gave their best shot at predicting the drivers who would line up on the grid today, the first race of the 2018 Formula One season.
Of these 14 participants, Marklar was the best. He matched 16 of this season's 20 drivers to their current teams, and also included Valtteri Bottas in his 2018 lineup (albeit at the wrong team – the deadline for entries at this game ended shortly before Rosberg's retirement announcement).
2003: Brian O Flaherty
2004: Flying Panda
2005: lukywill, Viceroy, Makarias
2017: ANF
2018: Marklar
Below is the list of full results, including the average pick as mentioned in the original thread. Just like a year ago, the average pick was better than all except two players. This can be explained by some of the moves being strongly rumored (such as Sainz to Renault), many unchanged lineups (such as Ferrari, Red Bull and Force India), and players tending to predict a few unlikely moves in the hopes of a big points payout.
Rank Player Points Exact 1 Marklar 100.77 16 2 Kev00 99.31 15 AVERAGE PICK 96.54 15 3 scheivlak 91.69 13 4 DutchQuicksilver 90.77 14 5 TurnOffTheLights 88.38 11 6 Anderis 86.69 10 7 SpaceHorseParty 86.54 13 8 Starchild 85.00 12 9 AJFIN 84.62 12 10 markelov74 84.54 12 11 Makarias 80.92 11 12 noikeee 78.31 11 13 Costaz 73.54 10 14 HeidfeldsBeard 71.54 9
Marklar was the only player to score over 100 points, with Kev00 losing out by slighly more than a point. Their guesses were similar in many respects, but there were two key differences:
- Marklar placed Grosjean in Haas, scoring 6.69 points for that choice. Kev00 picked Leclerc for that seat, thus scoring 2.46 points (as he still lines up for Sauber). Marklar did not place Leclerc in any team, ditto Kev00 with Grosjean.
- Kev00 scored 2.77 points for being one of the few players placing Sirotkin at Manor. Marklar did not place Sirotkin in any team.
When the entries were submitted for this game in November of 2016, Manor was still participating in races. The fact that they did not make it to 2017 was somewhat of a surprise, as shown by the fact most players expected them to make the grid in 2018. Only two players – TurnOffTheLights and Anderis – predicted that, and were rewarded with five extra points for that guess, which helped them into 5th and 6th place in the standings, ahead of players who had more exact picks.
19 of the 20 drivers racing today were picked by at least a few of the players (Sirotkin and Räikkönen were the most unpopular of those drivers, with 4 and 6 players picking them, respectively). The only driver who was a complete surprise was, of course, Brendon Hartley. The drying talent pool of the Red Bull Junior Team was noticed by most players. Few expected Sainz or Kvyat to continue at the team. Many of them expected Lando Norris to be given a seat at Toro Rosso, although that became much more unlikely once he became affiliated with McLaren.
Two players – TurnOffTheLights and Anderis (once again!) – made a bold choice in picking two unknown drivers for the team. They were the only two players not to pick Pierre Gasly for one of the seats, which translates into a loss of roughly five more points for each of them, but they did get five points each as Hartley was not explicitly named by any of the players. It seems like their strategy was to bet on Toro Rosso being sold, but it didn't work out that badly for either of them.
Here are some statistics on each driver on the 2018 grid:
Name Team Total In team Most popular team Valtteri Bottas Mercedes 14 0 Williams (12) Marcus Ericsson Sauber 14 14 Sauber (14) Lewis Hamilton Mercedes 14 9 Mercedes (9) Nico Hülkenberg Renault 14 14 Renault (14) Esteban Ocon Force India 14 11 Force India (11) Sergio Pérez Force India 14 9 Force India (9) Daniel Ricciardo Red Bull 14 12 Red Bull (12) Lance Stroll Williams 14 13 Williams (13) Stoffel Vandoorne McLaren 14 14 McLaren (14) Max Verstappen Red Bull 14 13 Red Bull (13) Sebastian Vettel Ferrari 14 8 Ferrari (8) Kevin Magnussen Haas 13 13 Haas (13) Carlos Sainz Renault 13 5 Renault (5) Fernando Alonso McLaren 12 11 McLaren (11) Pierre Gasly Toro Rosso 12 12 Toro Rosso (12) Romain Grosjean Haas 10 3 Renault (4) Charles Leclerc Sauber 8 2 Haas (6) Kimi Räikkönen Ferrari 6 6 Ferrari (6) Sergey Sirotkin Williams 4 0 Manor (2) Brendon Hartley Toro Rosso 0 0 N/A
As for the most popular driver who does not appear on this year's grid?
Nico Rosberg's non-appearance on the 2018 grid was correctly predicted only by scheivlak. It helped him to a 3rd place in the standings – it might not have won him the trophy, but it was definitely very memorable.
Besides Rosberg, two more drivers were expected to be on the grid by more than half of the contestants: Lando Norris (who will surely drive in Formula One, but not yet in 2018) and Pascal Wehrlein (who has driven in Formula One, but no longer in 2018).
That is it for the 2018 Silly Season Trophy. Stay tuned for the interim results of the 2019 Silly Season Trophy – these get updated every time a 2019 deal gets announced, so it might heat up sometime in late summer. If this seems like an interesting game and you would like to participate, you will have to wait a few months until the 2020 Silly Season Trophy – I hope to see you then! And, once again, congratulations to Marklar!
Edited by SpaceHorseParty, 25 March 2018 - 14:08.
