| | Everything you need to know about The Fantasy League! ©2001 SpeedCenter
| | SpeedCenter Fantasy League Rules Document, version 2.3.2
Last updated March 2, 2001. - Each participant will create a two driver team utilizing a set budget of $9 million. The object is to finish the season as the team with the most money. All fictitious award money paid in this league will be based on the ranking in real events of the real FedEx Championship Series in 2001. The official CART.com race results will be used to determine costs and earnings for finishing races. Results posted on CART.com are the only results that will be used and are non-contestable.
- Drivers can be chosen at will - theoretically every player could pick the same two drivers (now - what fun would that be?). When selecting your drivers, consider the cost and earning potential of a driver, rather than his chances to win the FedEx Championship Series. This fantasy league is about money, not necessarily the CART point system, although they do highly influence the outcome of the fantasy season. This league highly rewards teams for not destroying cars or engines, in addition to finishing well. Drivers known to be points producers will cost more to hire, so weigh the initial cost with how much they may earn during the 21 race season, subtracting what you think they may require in spare parts.
- Two drivers must be purchased at a cost specified in the Driver Price List. In addition, each driver purchased will determine the engine/chassis combo (i.e. you cannot buy a Lola-Honda for Jimmy Vassser; you must purchase a Reynard-Toyota combination). You will have to keep the cost of chassis and engine in mind for each driver into your initial purchase decision. The total cost for each driver is calculated for you and listed in the Driver Price list under "Startup Cost". As a reminder: if you purchase drivers that require different chassis', and you wish to have a spare car available to your team (at reduced pre-season prices), you must buy spares for the individual driver (i.e. if your drivers are Michael Andretti and Michel Jourdain Jr., you must buy separate spares for each driver, because they utilize different chassis'. Spare Parts Kits are universal and will be shared for the purpose of this game, so it doesn't matter which driver you assign them to if you chose to purchase them.).
- The driver recruiting prices are set by SpeedCenter based on driver performance in recent years as well as pre-season assumptions about their competitiveness in 2001, with the entire package and team factoring into the value of a driver. It's a team sport after all. Only drivers who are confirmed for full-season rides in 2001 at the closing date of these rules are available in this fantasy league.
- Replacing a driver in mid-season: Driver changes are not allowed. However, if your driver is out of a race for any reason, you will earn money or spend money based on how well the substitute driver performs in your driver's car. In effect, earnings and costs are based on the CAR NUMBER, not the driver. Therefore, if your driver is released from his team in the real world, and he is replaced, you will be credited with the earnings (and deducted for the costs) of the replacement. If the driver is not replaced, you will be charged a "no show" fee (explained later) for each of the remaining races, EVEN IF YOUR ORIGINAL DRIVER goes on to drive for another team. It's unlikely, but this is what happened in the 2000 season to Herta owners...
- Chassis and mechanical charges are automatically billed to your team during the season as needed. However, those purchased before the beginning of the season will be discounted by 40%. Therefore - if you assume there will be some breakage, it would be wise to purchase a spare chassis and/or Spare Parts Kit(s)...
- Spare Parts or extra chassis bought at the beginning of the season which are not used up by the end of the season, can not be sold back to increase the final total dollars in your team's budget.
- If one of your drivers doesn't finish due to a "Mechanical" issue (as listed in the official results on CART.com), and you have a Spare Parts Kit (bought at beginning of season), we will subtract the necessary parts from your stockpile. If you have no Spare Parts left in your Kit (each Kit will cover 2 "Mechanical" DNF'S), you will be charged the normal price for parts. The first charged DNF amount will be $100,000. The next $50,000. Subsequent DNF's for the team result in alternating charges of $100,000 and $50,000.
- A new chassis will be needed each SECOND time your driver comes into contact with another car or the wall. This will also be determined by the official results posted on CART.com. If the driver's reason for DNF is listed as "Contact", it will count against that driver and your team. Severity of the real accidents or any incidents during warmup, practive, or qualifying sessions do not matter in this league - for the sake of simplicity in this game, we assume that on the average 2 contacts cost as much as a complete chassis.
- New for the 2001 season: Now not just "Contact" and "Mechanical" will cost your team funds. We added 4 more DNF conditions to trigger charges against your team's account:
- $30,000 for "Fire"
- $20,000 for "Pit Incident"
- $10,000 for "Electrical"
- $5,000 for "Off Course"
These amounts will be subtracted from your team budget at each event per car that has the above DNF reason in the official race result listed on CART.com.
There are no pre-season spares to purchase to offset these costs - however, we have dropped the earnings for cars finishing below 12th place to offset these costs. All car and engine makes carry the same cost for repairs needed due to the above incidents. - Running a negative balance in your team budget will be acceptable. However, you will be charged an interest rate of 1% on your negative balance for each race weekend. This rate will be billed at the start of each race a team carries a negative balance. You can begin the season with a negative balance but we advise not to do so. We will charge interest each race until your team turns a positive balance. Make sure that your initial driver recruiting, combined with chassis and engine purchases does not exceed your $9,000,000 starting budget to avoid interest charges.
- Prize money will be awarded to teams whose drivers have finished a race (must be listed in the official race result as "Running"), have won the pole position, or have led the most laps. The amount of prize money is specified below. Prize money will double for the Michigan 500 and the California 500 mile events.
- All dollar values will be rounded to the nearest full dollar when we report standings. Our software used to calculate all expenses and team earnings will round for reporting purposes, but all math will be done without rounding.
- If your driver is not able to race, then his replacement will become your new driver. Money is earned based on the car driven by the driver you initially recruited (e.g. if Papis doesn't drive in a race, but Casey Mears fills in driving the #7 car, you would get Mears's earnings credited to your Papis seat. During events your driver or any replacement driver does not participate in (e.g. the # 7 car does not compete at all), you will not be able to earn any money, and in fact, you will be charged a "no-show" fee for the weekends administrative costs. An exception would be a driver who wins pole but then doesn't start the race. The team would still be credited for that pole award (but "no-show fees" would apply - see below) Your second driver will be unaffected by this and continue to earn (or cost) you money.
- If your driver is not able to race, nor is the car running with a substitute driver, you will get billed an "administrative fee" of $100,000 for that car. The key reason behind this rule (introduced last year for the 2000 season) is that in our league, a low cost (and usually low performing) driver/car combo can get a great budget established at the start of the season, and if that car is then retired, the owner doesn't run any risks of being billed for broken engines or chassis replacements. Now, whenever the car is not on the starting grid on race day, there will be a deduction of $100,000 per no-show.
- In case of a tie in the final season team earnings, these teams will have to share the bragging rights (as it will probably be two identical teams).
- Signup deadline is Friday, March 9, 2001 at exactly 1500 GMT (10:00 am Eastern Standard Time in the U.S.).
- Scores will be reported after each event on SpeedCenter's Fantasy web pages in this area - usually within a week of the event. This is a low-priority area on SpeedCenter, so please give us a break for putting up real news and information first. We are trying to automate this area as much as possible to speed up result retrieval.
- If you have any problems with the scoring, contact fantasy@speedcenter.com. Direct any questions about the league to that address. Answers may take some time, since they are generally forwarded to the scoring officials.
- SpeedCenter reserves the right to amend these rules as deemed necessary. This is the first season we are running this league and additional clarifications may become necessary at a later date.
- This is a just-for-fun game, adding something to look out for at each CART TV broadcast once you are a "virtual team owner yourself." Prizes? We will give away a free annual subscription to SpeedCenter on ChampCar.com to all participants!
- Players can sign up as often as they change their mind before the deadline. Please - Only one team per player. If you enter twice, only your most recent team will count. Please only two teams per email address (must be different players names).
- Scoring addendum: What if a driver scores a top 12 (CART point-paying) finish, but isn't listed as "Running" by CART.com? Well - the top 12 drivers in our league will still get paid, since they finished in the points paying positions.
Pos 1: 250000Pos 2: 200000Pos 3: 180000Pos 4: 140000Pos 5: 120000Pos 6: 100000Pos 7: 70000Pos 8: 60000Pos 9: 50000Pos 10: 30000Pos 11: 20000Pos 12: 10000Pole: 25000Most laps led: 25000 ALL amounts doubled for500 mile events, includingpole and most led. - Another scoring addendum: Just to clarify item 12 above -Since we score "earnings" based oncar number, and not based on the driver actually in the car, a team does get the earnings a substitute driver willproduce in case the regularly recruited driver is sitting out one or more events. In case a car is withdrawn entirely from the series (e.g. #15 Project Indy in 1998, or Herta's #77 in 2000), the team will not get any further earnings until the car returns and each event the car doesn't get entered will cost thefantasy team owner $100,000 in "no-show fees." We attempt to only have drivers on our fantasy roster who areconfirmed to run all 21 races in 2001, so this should not occur too frequently, but it may.
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