RandoEFC

Everything crossed for Kamala Harris and the Democrats to win.

I wonder if, in future, people would be interested in replacing the season predictions with a few alternatives that spanned maybe 4 or 6 races in future? E.G. Who will score the most points in the next four races? Who will have the most Q1 exits in the next four races? Which team outside the top four will score the most points in the next six races? Will Driver X overtake Driver Y in the standings after 6 more races have passed? Just a bit more "little and often" instead of having a massive points haul lasting the whole season. And then you can have questions that are based on 50/50 situations that crop up in real time throughout the season. Or we could keep the season-long predictions and just add these in? Depends if people can be bothered.

Pre-Season Predictions - Provisional Results A couple of reminders here. WDC and WCC are both worth 20 points if your pick wins it, and 10 points if they finish in the top three, but we introduced a "Verstappen rule" this year where picking Verstappen and/or Red Bull would give you half points. I think both championships are effectively "settled" at this point with Verstappen and McLaren as the winners, and Norris, Leclerc, Red Bull and Ferrari as top three finishers. So anyone who picked Leclerc ( @RandoEFC and @Tommy) or Verstappen (everyone else) has 10 points for the WDC pick, anyone who picked Red Bull has 5 points (everyone except @RandoEFC and @Tommy) for the WCC and anyone who picked Ferrari ( @Tommy) has 10 points. This is pretty much locked in, although @Tommy could still be in for 20 points if Ferrari can overhaul McLaren and win the WCC. The next three categories are worth 10 points if correct and 5 points if nobody got it but you were closest. Drivers to Win a Race has already hit 7 for the season, which is higher than anyone guessed, so @Tommy and @OrangeKhrush have 5 points there. This is locked in. As of this weekend, Alpine have taken the "Constructors to Score a Podium" tally to 5, meaning that @MUFC, @nudge, @Whiskey and @Dave have moved from 5 points for "wrong but closest" to 10 points for being spot on. This is subject to change if a 6th different team get a podium in the remaining three races, which would shift the 10 points away from these four and over to @Stan, @Tommy and @OrangeKhrush instead. I haven't resolved the Most Retirements one yet. It's a bit of a mess, Sargeant and I think Gasly were tied on 3, and there's some "Did Not Starts" in there as well. I've left it for now in the hope that someone takes a clear lead by the end of the season and I don't have to decide how to treat any DNS, DSQs etc. Finally, the driver battles. The scoring here is that whoever gets the greatest number of them correct get the 10 points. All of these are pretty much locked in apart from Gasly vs Ocon, with Gasly leading by only 3 points. Currently @Dave and @Coma are on for 10 points here with 9 out of 10 correct. None of the other battles are remotely likely to change to be honest, and if Ocon does pip Gasly in the championship, then @Dave will be on ten out of ten anyway and will have the points to himself. With Coma not really taking part anymore, this score is for all intents and purposes, locked in. Applying those scores to the table make quite a significant difference. @RandoEFC loses the lead to @Tommy and only finds himself 1 point ahead of @OrangeKhrush. @Stan falls behind both Mercedes team-mates, with @Dave currently set to score the biggest haul of points from pre-season. The bottom four remain unchanged currently. In the Constructors', McLaren drop from 1st to 3rd with Mercedes coming firmly into contention with a mammoth score of 60 points from their pre-season picks. Remember these pre-season scores are provisional and someone will be bagging 5 or 10 points for the Most Retirements prediction. Ferrari winning the WCC or another surprise podium finisher in the last three races could shake things up quite a lot as well. Regardless, this is what the "real" table looks like heading into the last rounds.

Results - Brazilian Grand Prix An exceedingly difficult week sees @nudge and @Dave score no points at all! There was some success elsewhere though. @RandoEFC, @MUFC, @Tommy, @Whiskey, @DeadLinesman and @OrangeKhrush all bagged 5 points for Lando Norris' pole position, but this was where the scoring ended for some entrants. Unsurprisingly, the podium scoring is paltry with Alpine taking up two of the three positions in a freak result. Max Verstappen's win wasn't predicted by anyone but @Stan and @Tommy do pick up a couple of consolation points for having him on their podium. Nobody nailed George Russell's finishing position of 4th, perhaps surprisingly. @RandoEFC, @MUFC and @Whiskey were just one position away though so it's 2 points each for them. The bonus question gave out 5 points for each driver that was knocked out in Q1 for each predictor's chosen team. Alpine and Aston Martin confounded most of us by negotiating the first qualifying session successfully, but Bottas' progress to Q2 left four non-Sauber spots in the bottom five to be occupied. Hamilton's shock exit didn't yield anyone points, Colapinto's exit saw @Tommy pick up 5 points having picked Williams, but the jackpot goes to @Whiskey who scores the maximum 10 points as the only person to go with Haas, who saw both of their drivers eliminated in Q1. The championship is hotting up as another strong weekend from @Tommy sees him reduce the gap to leader @RandoEFC to single figures. @OrangeKhrush is still in sight but 6 points in 2 weekends have left @Stan with a lot of work to do. @Whiskey's top score for the week sees him move within realistic distance of Coma in 9th place to escape the wooden spoon. In the Constructors' standings, McLaren and Red Bull cancel each other out this week. A let-off for Red Bull with one of their drivers, as @Tommy puts it, "doing a Checo" this weekend and failing to score points. Kudos to Ferrari who are well out of the hunt for the title but still managed to get this week's top score. Aston Martin weren't awarded any insurance points on this occasion due to the lowest score of those that entered being zero. Later today I'm going to "resolve" as many of the pre-season predictions as possible, which could change the standings by quite a lot. These will be subject to change in some cases, but at least we'll go into the last triple header knowing whether or not somebody has an extra 30 points ready to appear out of thin air from their pre-season predictions.

Results - Mexican Grand Prix The first part of a triple (yes, triple) update: Qualifying for the Mexican Grand Prix saw Carlos Sainz take a pole position that was only backed by @Tommy, who picks up 5 points. @Dave deserves some credit for backing Ferrari where the rest of the field backed Norris once again, but unfortunately for him he backed the wrong prancing horse. Onto the race and @Tommy cleaned up again as the only person to predict not only Carlos Sainz' victory, but also Lando Norris to finish 2nd. 10 more points go to him. Elsewhere, @Stan and @DeadLinesman were the only people to predict a Sainz podium, scoring them 2 points each, and everyone who predicted had Norris elsewhere in their top three, scoring them 2 points as well. @RandoEFC, @MUFC and @OrangeKhrush bagged 5 points apiece for nailing Charles Leclerc's 3rd place, while @nudge, @Whiskey and @Dave missed by one position and have to settle for the 2 points. On to the random driver, and Kevin Magnussen's strong points finish wasn't on anyone's radar. 2 points each go to @MUFC, @Tommy and @Dave for getting closest with 12th place, but in reality the Haas driver was completely underestimated by everyone. Finally, the bonus question asked for a pair of drivers who would go wheel-to-wheel during the race. @Dave bagged 5 points on the second lap when Carlos Sainz passed Max Verstappen for the lead. Then Norris and Verstappen, who very much went wheel-to-wheel, sent 5 points in the direction of @nudge and @OrangeKhrush. I would have given points for Norris vs Leclerc after Norris' pressure saw Leclerc concede position through flying off track. Nobody predicted the battle between the two Mercedes. I haven't awarded points to @DeadLinesman for LEC/VER because, while Leclerc passed Verstappen as a result of his battle with Norris seeing him fly off the circuit, they didn't really have an on-track battle themselves. Here's what it does to the standings: @Tommy's comfortable high score for the week sees him move up to 3rd place with @OrangeKhrush also closing the gap to leader @RandoEFC. @Dave also gains ground in the midfield with a double-figure return but @Stan's meagre tally of 4 points costs him ground. Red Bull have taken a big chunk out of McLaren's lead in the Constructors' standings and the race is very much on between both teams and Mercedes. Aston Martin were missing a driver again this weekend but still managed to outscore McLaren and Ferrari - the first time this has happened to a one-driver team all season.

Saturday 9th November, 2024 Cardiff 2-1 Blackburn, 12.30 Juventus 2-0 Torino, 19.45 Leganes 1-1 Sevilla, 20.00 Orlando City 2-1 Charlotte, 23.00 Sunday 10th November, 2024 Central Coast 2-2 Wellington Phoenix, 05.00 Liverpool Women 1-2 Chelsea Women, 12.30 Sheff Utd 2-0 Sheff Weds, 12.30 Istanbul Basaksehir 1-2 Besiktas, 16.00 Lyon 2-0 St Etienne, 19.45 Benfica 2-1 Porto, 20.45

A team getting a double podium having been 9th in the standings before the race has to be a potential first doesn't it? Ocon looked like he potentially could even have gone on and won after the first restart.

Is that real? That's pretty major headloss stuff from him. To be expected though when you ask someone minutes after their championship hopes have been ended. Also they're all salty cry babies when things don't go their way haha.

Masterclass from Max and disasterclass from Norris by the standards you need to win an F1 title. The best driver throughout the season is going to be the champion. Norris and Mclaren have to improve for next year. They've got the speed to win a title but there's just too many mistakes and bad decisions.

Norris completely shat the bed now. Championship probably done and dusted.

I still find it hilarious that drivers were toodling around calling it red flag conditions when they're on Intermediates. Those full wet tyres are a joke and a waste of time. They never restart a race or end the safety car period until the conditions are good enough for Intermediates anyway.

Might be reduced points here because it'll be difficult to finish the rest of the laps before it gets dark.

Norris and Mclaren are absolutely cursed when it comes to these tyre calls. 50/50 and every time they get it wrong. From Russia 2021 to Canada, Britain and Brazil this year. Verstappen drove great to get himself into contention but man how lucky with the timing. Norris would have been right behind him on his fresh Inters if that had happened a few laps later. They won't restart this until it's Intermediate conditions now. It'll be a while.

Wait until you see what happens now there's a red flag. Free tyre change for everyone. Colapinto clearly knows the tradition that comes with that Williams seat and totalling the car to cause red flags that help Verstappen win championships.

I think Mclaren have fucked it.

Always nice for a Red Bull driver if they have a shocker in qualifying to have three team mates to wave them through on their way through the field instead of just one.

Max is showing his class here but that is absolutely piss poor from Piastri in the context of the championship.

They are investigating Norris and only Norris apparently. It's an easy defence for McLaren to say well everyone else did the same. However some cars stayed on the grid for ages thinking they shouldn't go and ended up having to because Norris had led them away so I can see why he's more responsible. There's no precedent for this. I can see him getting a 5 second penalty or hopefully just a reprimand. Seems like there's some serious confusion though so really it should be a reprimand, a clarification and a statement that anyone who does that in future gets a particular penalty.

Difficult to know whether Norris could get penalised for that...

Stroll

Crazy session. Norris delivered and has to waltz to victory from there. A shame for them that Piastri is going to have to end up picking his way through the field. Some cars that crashed out probably won't be able to race which is a shame. It will help Max starting from supposedly 17th though.

Cue the conspiracy theories from the Max fan accounts on Twitter who have spent the last day going "hmm errm ackshually kinda weird the timing of the VSC waiting until after McLaren swapped their cars". I'm sure race control deliberately waited for enough cars to finish their laps this time to knock Max out before throwing the red flag. That's the sort of act of god Norris has needed to go in his favour to have a chance of winning the title. He has to capitalise here.

Norris got away with one there.

An absolutely horrific and unforgiveable result against one of the worst relegation fodder teams I've seen. And that's where I was when it was 0-0. Everton once again refuse to propel themselves away from the relegation battle. We were unlucky there but you shouldn't need luck to get a result from a shower of shite like them. Manager yet again has big question marks. Not starting Branthwaite. Continuing with McNeil in the 10. Taking off Ndiaye. Playing Harrison in the 10 instead of Lindstrom after that substitution. Leaving McNeil on for the whole 90 when he was well off it. It's been a really poor start to the season performance-wise. We could easily be bang in the shit at this point aside from a good second half at Palace, a penalty save against Newcastle where we robbed a point and a last minute fluke equaliser against Fulham where we robbed a point again. It isn't good enough. Sadly we can't gamble on another manager because if we get it wrong we might well end up getting relegated. Anyone at the club who's thinking about extending Dyche's tenure at the club needs showing the door though. Leicester can get fucked as well by the way. Trailed at both Southampton and Ipswich and been bailed out by red cards twice. Jammy cunts .

Beto equaliser ruled out for offside by about 0.5mm. Honestly the amount of marginal shite that has just fallen for Southampton here is ludicrous. All to scrape a 1-0 home win against one of the worst sides in the league.