If you click on ‘leagues‘ when in your Castrol GP Predictor league account (a tab at the top) you can see the league positions and points awarded for the TJ13 All Star Racers. Here’s my review.
Having crawled out of bed around 04:15 to review FP3 and thus plot any adjustments required, this was my adjusted and final selection made about 15 minutes before Q1 was scheduled to start.
I’m a bit irritated with myself for a couple of reasons. Last year I realised Alonso was best value placed on the podium each week of the game, but I moved him from 2nd to 4th. I also sentimentally shuffled Webber from 4th to 2nd based on the romance of a first ever Aussie on the Aussi GP podium.
Then a lack of information stitched me up for P3. I reckon Grosjean will push Kimi hard this year, but didn’t know he had a C grade spec car until late on Saturday, so when he got the bits that Kimi had all weekend he had little time to set the car up. This would explain his relative lack of pace in the race.
Pole Position: Further, not selecting Vettel for pole was just silly with hindsight yet the forecast suggested rain in qualification so that is why Fernando got my vote for pole. If we discount quattro who failed to make any predicitions and scored zero – 64% of you guessed pole correctly (30/47).
League Leader: Congratulations to celtniex scoring an excellent 66 points. 20 of these were bonus points awarded for selecting correctly the Pole Position, Fastest Lap and Most Positions Gained correctly – this was the only team to manage this feat. The team scoring the most points without bonuses was Iso EV F1 scoring 50 pts. They were one of only 4 teams to get 3 drivers placed in the correct finishing positions – the other 3 were miz the wiz, TeamJupilerF1 and JB94
Winner: I have to admit I had some inside information on this one, and just 2 others and I selected the race winner (3/47 – 6%) – joining me on the podium with ultimate glory and victory wreaths are TeamJupiterF1 and Karbry Racing. The latter of these was always going to struggle having selected in their top 10 Hulkenberg, Rosberg and Ricciardo – all DNF’s. Unlucky guys.
Podium: Fernando was a popular selection for a podium place and 14 teams correctly placed the Spaniard 2nd – just 3 teams placed Vettel correctly in 3rd. This means from 47 teams, there were 141 attempts to place drivers on the podium correctly and only 20 were succesful – 14%.
No correct places: 17 teams – 36% – didn’t place one driver correctly in the top, yet more than half of these teams did select the correct pole sitter.
Bottom spot: Terrible Traffic has the honour of supporting the rest of us for now and like me picked Fernando for pole.
Experts: You can see these guys if you click on the tab in your account marked ‘experts’. However, for me Karun Chandhok edged me out with 38 points, but I still enjoy that I am beating ‘The AUTOSPORT Team” – whose strap line is, ‘The world’s foremost motorsport authority‘. They have 11 points folks.
Next Round: I suspect it could be all change in Malaysia. Giedo VD Garde arrived there last night just 7 hours following the end of the race. IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO DO THE WRITE UP LIKE THIS, please drop our fantastic PM a line at johnmyburgh@gmail.com. (You probably need to be able to use a spreadsheet – or have graph paper to record the results team by team).
At Sepang this weekend rain has to be a factor with throwing in some weird results!
Perez to beat Alonso – now he’s not shackled by team orders???
Like you judge i had a bout of sentimentality and put webber on pole as I’m sure i read somewhere that the pirelli tyres were only good for one lap and then remembered back in the day when you had the one lap qualy shoot out that webber was really good at flogging the downforce bereft jaguar around he was driving at the time into a good qualy spot.
I’ve been thinking for a while that while the RB is a stunning qualy car that as soon as it gets into traffic or stuck behind another car it dosen’t seem to perform aswell
It doesn’t like the cold… seriously the car will run better in hotter weather, particularly with hotter track temperatures.
It does lack a little grunt from it’s clever but powershy French engine, yet the DRS should’ve overcome that problem….
I find information like Grosjean being in a C spec car interesting. Any transfer of parts or new parts put where is good. Any chance of including more of these tidbits in the future? Maybe a State of the cars recap for each race? I don’t really think any of this information is posted on the net at all.
You are the only goggle result for ‘Grosjean C spec car’. And I’m starving for information like this.
I would usually do an ‘off track’ roundup – James Parker will do the ‘on track’ – it is there all this kind of stuff will be – but I was too ill to do this – feeling a bit better – hopefully all good for this weekend.
Hell yeah, am doing goooooood. 😉
this castrol thingy is really nice to play (& easy).
I’ll live with my score, considering one of my picks didn’t even start the race. 🙂 and 2 others DNF’d ……
Pardon me Judge, for changing the subject, but earlier today I rewatched yesterday race and was wondering if Kimi winning with
a 2 stopper, could of been down to how close to the ground, his Lotus car seemed to have stayed as specially towards the end of the race.
When the camera was on him, I notice that as he drove his car over the same parts of the track, it just kept sending up sparks.
(It has been said the Lotus car is kinder on its tyre wear.)
I’m mentioning it because I would have thought that by the near end of the race, with so much less fuel on board the car should
of been well clear of the ground, so as not to bottom out as much as it was doing.
But as I said before, when his car ran over the same parts of the track, it just keep giving off sparks, right down the finish.
If anyone would care to rerun the SKY coverage, it’s very noticeable at lap 46, 48, 53 through to 58, the corner before the flag.
Be interested to see what anyone else thinks!
Alonso Ferrari car also bottomed out a few times too, but nothing to the extent Kimi’s was doing.
I’ve tried watching this, but I’m struggling to see much difference between the Ferrari ride height and the Lotus
Tyre pressures could make some difference….
Traditionally Lotus (& before as Renault) have often built their cars conceptually based on suspension. Even as far back as 05 with trick mass dampers etc. Then the anti dive system’s… The last few yrs its been very apparent that their cars are softly sprung compared to others & in particular since the advent of step noses its clear there’s something odd going on with asymmetric ‘lumps’ where the suspension arms enter the chassis. Nobody knows whats going on there & I’ve noticed quite a few sparks before on bumpy tracks. Certainly their focus on suspension has aided their preservation with tyre’s in the past & looks like its finally paid dividends in Melbourne
I think Kimi was simply “on Fire” 😉
I’ll take 2nd. Great info Judge. Looking forward to the season ahead. Great banter.
Gutted I got the podium right but Vettel & Kimi wrong way round!
Rain is a factor in Malaysia, but so is the heat…. Quandary’s!!!!
How many had Lewis in the top 5? Mclaren’s performance must have cost everyone a few points.
I had neither Mercedes in top 10 as I thought reliability would be their problem – I was half right.
It is such a gamble early season. You will need to review right up to the last minute. Who knows what will happen? Tyre degradation if its hot and long run pace will be important. If it is wet? Who knows. Could help Mclaren with Sergio and Jenson both good in the wet. And if it is wet what about Hulkenberg in the Sauber?
Hi Paul -Great to hear from you – agreed on last minute decisions due to conditions… I had both Hulk and Sutil in top 10 – and neither of their team mates….
You do all know you can click on anyone else in the league and see their selections after the event …Yes?
I had Lewis bang on, I had Vettel, Alonso and Grosjean on the podium, which bit me in the ass, all the right cars, 2 of the right drivers, but none in the right place!
Wild card… my ass, any tricks to lure off the opposition. Seem to be a midfielder at the moment, my instincts seemed not too bad.. better than my points sggested, I set mine after FP2 and missed out on updating it after FP3, but Grosjeans wonky car, Hulkenberg not starting, and Nico retirement hurt me bad!
Looking forward to round two!