| | Everything you need to know about The Fantasy League! ©1998 SpeedCenter
| | | SpeedCenter Fantasy League Rules Document, version 2.2 Last updated March 1, 1999. - Each participant will create a two driver team utilizing a set budget of $7 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 1998. The official Swiss Timing Race result will be used to determine failed engines, broken chassis or earned award money for finishing races.
- 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 addtion to prize money. Drivers known to be points producers will cost more to hire, so weigh the initial cost with how much they may earn during the 20 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 Honda engine for Michael Andretti, he must have a Ford-Cosworth). You will have to calculate the cost of chassis and engine for each driver into your initial purchase decision. As a reminder: if you purchase drivers that require different components, and you wish to add a few spare parts at reduced price to your team, you must buy spares for the individual driver (i.e. if your drivers are Michael Andretti and Paul Tracy, you must buy separate spares for each driver, because they share neither chassis nor engine type).
- 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 1999, 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 1999 at the closing date of these rules are available in this fantasy league.
- Replacing a driver in mid-season: Because we only had 3 requests in 1998, and because of the overhead to change our database, we decided not to offer driver trades this season. In 2000, we hope to offer not only driver trading options, but many more features. This year we are simply runningout of time to continue this feature.
- Chassis and engines are automatically billed to your team during the season as needed. However, those purchased before the beginning of the season will be discounted by about 35-40%, depending on make.
- Engines or extra Chassis bought at the beginning of the season and not used at 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 engine failure and you have a replacement engine (bought at beginning of season), we will subtract one engine from your stockpile. If you have no additional engines left, you will be charged the normal price for an engine. A failed engine will be determined according to Swiss Timing reports for that race. 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 Swiss Timing reports listing drivers as DNF due to "contact." Severity of the real accidents or any incidents during warmup 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.
- 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 end 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 postive balance. Make sure that your initial driver recruiting, combined with chassis and engine purchases does not exceed your $7,000,000 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 US 500 and the California 500 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 intially recruited (e.g. if papis doesn't drive a race, but Rahl fills in driving the #7 car, you would get Rahals 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. 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. Your second driver will be unaffected by this and continue to earn (or cost) you money.
- 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).
- The number of points used for this tie-break score will be the sum of points the FedEx Championship Series awards to the two drivers you select.
- Signup deadline is Thursday, March 12, 1998. If you have any problems with the scoring, contact pburke@spoeedcenter.com. Direct any questions about the league to that address. 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.
- 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.
- We are trying to find sponsors to support this league with some prizes for the top finishers. Mostly, 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".
- Players can sign up as often as they change their mind before the deadline. Only one team per player is allowed. 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 Omega Timing? Well - the top 12 drivers in our league will get paid, but none of the drivers below 12th place will get paid.
Pos 1: 200000 if running, 200000 if not runningPos 2: 160000 if running, 160000 if not runningPos 3: 140000 if running, 140000 if not runningPos 4: 120000 if running, 120000 if not runningPos 5: 100000 if running, 100000 if not runningPos 6: 80000 if running, 80000 if not runningPos 7: 60000 if running, 60000 if not runningPos 8: 50000 if running, 50000 if not runningPos 9: 40000 if running, 40000 if not runningPos 10: 30000 if running, 30000 if not runningPos 11: 20000 if running, 20000 if not runningPos 12: 10000 if running, 10000 if not runningPos 13: 8000 if running, 0 if not runningPos 14: 6000 if running, 0 if not runningPos 15-last: 4000 if running, 0 if not runningPole: 10000 if running, 10000 if not runningMost laps led: 10000 if running, 10000 if not runningALL amounts doubled for 500 mile events, inlcudingpole 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 (e.g. Tracy race #1 in 1999 - you get Boesel earnings or damage count). In case a car is withdrawn entirely from the series (e.g. #15 Project Indy in 1998), the team will not get any further earnings until the car returns. We attempt to only have drivers on our fantasy roster who areconfirmed to run all 20 races in 1999, so this should not occur too frequently.
- The Hawaii Super Prix is NOT part of theFantasy league in 1999. It is a non-points race and only 16 drivers will participate. We also don'tquite know how the scoring will actually be done. In 2000, we will reconsider adding this event to the fantasyschedule.
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