2010 Forwardcharm Fantasy Rally Rules
Welcome to the 2010 Forwardcharm Fantasy Rally championship.
(Changes for 2010 are marked like this)
The rules for 2010 haven't changed much from 2009. The main changes are the scoring
system, which now matches the FIA's last-minute decision to change it, and the addition
of the SWRC category. If you played last year there's no need to read all the rules again this year - the new SWRC
category behaves exactly like the JWRC and PWRC - it contains the Super 2000 cars that will be used in the WRC from 2011.
The idea is simple. Pick a team, change it as many times as you like throughout the year and score points
when your selections do well in the World Rally Championship (WRC), Junior World Rally Championship (JWRC), the
Production World Rally Championship (PWRC) and the Super 2000 World Rally Championship
(SWRC). The game is just for fun, it costs nothing to enter and you can enter multiple teams if you like.
Again, the prize(s)
will be funded by the revenue gained by clicks on the advertising on the right hand side of each page
(which gave us a prize fund of £50 last year, shared between the top 3 finishers).
Starting from last year, your email address must be a valid one - you won't be able to
activate your team without clicking the link that will be sent to the email address you provide.
This is for two reasons -
firstly, so I can contact you when you win and secondly, because there's a robot out there creating random teams -
this filters them out. You'd think people would have better things to do.
To enter, simply create your team from the link above. There is no "team budget", so you can chop and
change as many times as you like for no penalty, except during a race weekend (see "Upcoming Events" for the calendar).
Each selection has a weighting, decided by me and is likely to change during the season if they do better or worse
than expected. The selection's score is multiplied by its weighting at the start of the rally, thus giving the
less orthodox selections more chance to contribute to your team's score.
For example, Sébastien Loeb may have a weighting of 1 as he is likely to score lots. Matthew Wilson, however,
may be less likely to do well and so his weighting may be 5, meaning he scores five times as much as Loeb does.
The effect of this weighting is to level the playing field - you won't win if you play safe with the big boys,
you'll only make it to the top if you can predict the underdogs' success.
The weighting of any selection will only ever change while the site is locked during a rally.
This means that once you pick a driver, you can be confident that his weighting won't change before the start of the
next rally. In practice, the weightings rarely change after the first two or three races.
There are 13 rounds in the 2010 WRC season, so that makes 13 chances for your
WRC drivers and team to score.
Each WRC round also features a round of one or more of the JWRC, PWRC or SWRC championships - naturally where there is
no JWRC round, your JWRC driver will score nothing (even if he decides to take part anyway), and the same for the
PWRC and SWRC.
Your team consists of the following:
Two WRC drivers.
One WRC team.
One JWRC driver.
One PWRC driver.
One SWRC driver.
Scoring
Scoring is calculated at the end of each race weekend according to the results listed on
www.wrc.com. In the real rally championships, points are awarded
in accordance with the FIA standard: NOTE that the new scoring system was only announced
by the FIA on the eve of the first race, so in our championship the first rally scored the old points,
i.e. 10 for 1st place etc.
25 points for 1st place,
18 points for 2nd place,
15 points for 3rd place,
12 points for 4th place,
10 points for 5th place,
8 points for 6th place,
6 points for 7th place,
4 points for 8th place,
2 points for 9th place,
1 point for 10th place.
In the Forwardcharm Fantasy Rally, points are awarded as follows.
Each WRC driver scores double championship points for his final placing, plus 2
points for finishing the rally and 1 point for each stage win (a stage win being the fastest time recorded on that
stage), but the FIRST stage win for that driver scores 10 points. In the event of a tied stage,
I go with what wrc.com says.
Your WRC team generates points for both drivers in that team. Each team-mate scores
half of his individual score for the team.
Your JWRC driver, PWRC driver and SWRC driver score double championship points for his/her final placing within his/her own
championship, plus 2 points for finishing the rally and 1 point for each stage win within his/her own championship,
but the FIRST stage win for that driver scores 5 points.
So if you choose Aaron Burkart as your JWRC driver and he comes 10th
overall, but is the highest placed JWRC driver, you get 50 points for Aaron finishing first within his own
championship (corresponding to Aaron getting 25 points towards his own campaign), plus 2 points for finishing. If he
wins 1 stage, he gets 10 bonus points, if he wins 2 stages he gets 11 points, if he wins 5 stages he gets 14 points, etc.
Then this whole total is multiplied by Aaron's weighting. It sounds complicated - it isn't. It boils down to: "crap drivers
score loads if they do well."
ALL points are multiplied by that selection's weighting, as described above.
Notes
There are some other points to bear in mind:
JWRC drivers nominate 5 of the 6 events to compete in, meaning that each driver opts out of one event in
the season. The nominations made by each driver will be available in the "Upcoming Events" section when they are
announced.
PWRC drivers nominate 6 of the 9 events to compete in, meaning that each driver opts out of three events in
the season. The nominations made by each driver will be available in the "Upcoming Events" section when they are
announced.
SWRC drivers nominate 7 of the 10 events to compete in, meaning that each driver opts out of three events in
the season. The nominations made by each driver will be available in the "Upcoming Events" section when they are
announced.
No changes will be permissible to your team once the rally starts. The site is
generally locked down at midnight the night before the first stage. In 2010 the events are allowed to start on
different days, so this won't necessarily always be on the Thursday preceding each event, as it has been in the past.
Driver changes have caused us some problems in the past few years.
In 2010 we started an experiment whereby you would keep the driver number - but that turned out to be a non-starter
as many drivers switched numbers after the very first race. Instead we'll have to revert to the old system of
manually changing your driver if he's not racing. Unless you've asked to suppress email reminders when you last edited
your team, you'll get an email notifying you that your driver isn't due to contest the next rally, usually a day or
two before the rally starts.
If a driver is classified as finished by the FIA, they get the finish bonus.
The entry lists for each rally are subject to last-minute alterations. This happens fairly regularly -
if I spot it in time, I'll warn any affected team, but I don't catch them all.
Privacy
This site is not secure. Your password will be transmitted over the internet in plain-text and so could
potentially be read by dodgy Nigerians.
For this reason, it is advisable not to use a password that you use elsewhere. If you forget your password, simply
send an email to jimbo@forwardcharm.co.uk from the email address that you registered and I will reset it.
The personal details you enter (name, email address and password) will be used solely for the running of the
Forwardcharm Fantasy Rally site and will not be used or distributed for any other purpose without your prior consent.
Have fun!
That's all. If you have any problems, please
let me know so I can do something about it.
I hope you enjoy playing Forwardcharm Fantasy Rally.
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