|
Race
Summary:
Untouchable
Duck Dirty duck has done it - the team is the 2007 NASCAR fantasy
league champion! Larry Kinderknecht out of Quinter, KS has ran an impressive
season, only spending 1 week outside the top 5 in the season standings.
Most impressive was his lock up on first place - dirty duck was #1 for 17 races
this year... that's almost half the season! Congratulations on an
excellent season!
The
Tyler Tandem Takes Two After losing the #2 spot in the season
standings a couple weeks ago, our duo of Tylers came firing back with an
impressive burst in the last race to claim second on the season with a
race-winning 19 point lineup. TTT had all four drivers in the top 10 - a
feat not often accomplished by teams this season. Great finish!
Hot
Rod Mildcat After proving that I didn't have enough to challenge
for #1 and then also losing #2, I'm considering changing my login name. Much like my K-State
namesake's football team, I just didn't have what it takes at the end of the
year. Going into the last race with a 12 point lead wasn't enough to stay
ahead of TTT, so HRW drops one spot to complete the top 3 for the year.
Intimidator
finishes strong The Intimidator had a rough start to the season,
hanging out around the bottom of the pack. Soon the team caught fire and
was in the top 10 only 4 weeks after being in the 23rd spot. TI spent the
rest of the season hanging out around the top 5, rising to 3rd several times and
finishing a respectable 4th place.
Smoke
Rises Smoke20 had a very nice season this year - spending only one
week outside the top 15, and that was the very first week. Smoke20 spent
the latter half of the season right where he needed to be - top 5 with a few
weeks at #1 even. A few unlucky breaks and things went a little south
toward the end as Smoke20 fell out of the top 5 for a few weeks. But after
the final race, Smoke20 made it back into the top 5 to finish out the season.
The
Rest of the Top 10...
-
Trentonk
fell victim to Tony Stewart's trouble and ironically fell victim to the
Smoke20 team because of it.
-
Shake
N Bake Racing hit a plateau at #7 and finished there also - not bad
considering this team was once in 25th place, and this was the team's
highest ranking this season.
-
Another
team finishing at their highest point was Hotrod. A week after
crashing into the top 10, Hotrod moves up one more spot to finish 8th on the
season. Excellent surge at the end and a great finish by Hotrod.
-
One
week after dropping a dismal 4 spots, Cosmo regained his composure and
regained those 4 spots back to finish in the top 10 at #9. With the
exception of week 2, 9th place was also the highest achieved position for
Cosmo, who held that spot several times toward the end of the year.
-
Finishing
out the top 10 is a team that was a contender early in the season - 2nd
place a couple times even. A little misfortune put Speedracer back
around 15th place and it was up and down the rest of the year. After
gaining two spots last week from 14th to 12th, a repeat performance up two
from 12th to 10th this week gives Speedracer a top 10 on the season.
Life
on the outside It was not a good finish for those just outside the
top 10 this week. Brickman was trying to finish a nice run for the top 10
that got off-track by Tony Stewart. JTC & The Boys just plain got
derailed - Bowyer - 39th, Earnhardt - 36th, Stewart - 30th... need we say
more? And 4U2Envy just had an average day at the track that couldn't quite
compete with the good lineups. Whitetrash tied 4U2Envy for 13th place this
year, the only team from 11th to 15th to move UP.
With
several DNF's for this last race, it was apparent some teams gave up the ghost
this season - figuring there was not much left to salvage this year. So,
some teams got a free lift after the final race - MonkeyMan moved up to
positions even after turning in a 72 point lineup. Next year, I'd like to
think up some incentives for the top 15 and top 20 to encourage participation at
all spots - not just inside the top 10. Hopefully that would eliminate the
DNF's, too. If anyone has some ideas or suggestions, let me know.
Category
Chat Wins - Top 5's - Top 10's
Wins -
Hot Rod Wildcat had the wins locked in at 19 after last week. Cosmo
finished second with 18 after choosing this week's winner, Matt Kenseth.
Top 5's
- Hot Rod Wildcat also takes home the top 5's with 53 selections this
season. Trentonk was second with 50.
Top 10's
- The Tyler Tandem made a fierce run at the top 10's with all four drivers in
the top 10 this week, but dirty duck and Hot Rod Wildcat finished strong
selecting 3 top 10 drivers this week and totaling 81 on the season.
Season
Wrap-Up It was a good season this year with some great competition
up until the very end. We had two teams end up tied - 4U2Envy and
Whitetrash, and two teams finish within 1 point of each other - Off Constantly
and TBills. The top 10 was also fairly competitive, with about a 28 point
average gap between positions. That drops to about a 22 point difference
if you take out the 70 gap between 1st and 2nd. By looking at the graph
above, you can see that about 8th through 18th was the most competitive with an
average difference of only 8.5 points per position!
I had a
great time this year, as I hope you all did. I've got some ideas for
improvements next year, including a chat room or message board to add a little
online communication for those who might want it. I also want to design
the site to show some race statistics as far as lineup choices, most popular
drivers, etc. There are some interesting stories in the numbers
sometimes. I also thought about adding some extra incentives for things
such as best possible lineup (the best lineup you could have picked and stayed
within salary cap), most race lineup wins, top 5's, etc (this would be as the
team finishes, not the driver finishes as are already awarded), and some extra
incentives for top 15 or top 20 on the season to make it interesting all the way
to the end for everyone. I'm still thinking about exactly what to do and
I'm open to any ideas or suggestions while it's fresh in your mind from this
season. Please give me your input from the season - good, bad, or
otherwise. I apologize for being late posting the race results sometimes -
I actually redesigned the way I enter the race results that takes about 2
minutes instead of the 30-45 minutes, but I didn't want to try to implement it
this late in the season and screw up all our numbers and information for this
season. Next year, I'll be able to download the results from NASCAR's
website and have race results and driver salaries updated and posted within
minutes. I'm looking forward to that and I'm sure you are, too. For
the most part, everyone was pretty quiet this season. I would really like
to hear if you have thoughts about the website or the league... like I said -
good OR bad. If you have any complaints, please let me know so I can fix
things. I want the league to be easier to use, more informative, and even
more fun next year!
Thanks to
everyone for participating, and congratulations again to our champion, dirty
duck. I will be sending emails to the winners that have prize money coming
to them to confirm mailing addresses. I will probably not be able to get
everything done before Thanksgiving as I'm heading out to Indiana tomorrow for
turkey day with the family, but I will cut checks first thing when I get home.
~ Adam
|