Bracket-style racing for next season?

I think the bracket idea could be good.

1st round win 5pts
2nd round win 10 pts
3rd round win 20 pts etc.

I, for one, really appreciate the "laziness" approach to my garage. I can pickem' and let them sit with out having to pick a whole bunch of cars every week.

One thing that I don't like about the other racing fantasy games is that you're limited to the number of times you can use a certain driver. For example, I can only activate driver A for 9 races in a 36 race season. So every week I have to research whether that driver is good at the upcoming track and then have to do that 8 times per week to see if any of my drivers are good at that track. Just too much of a time suck for my busy life.

Maybe, just thinking out loud here, instead of 3-2-1 we could reduce the number of cars in each garage to 2-1-1. That would open up 2 cars per garage and if there are 42 garages that's 84 cars that become available. Again, just thinking out loud.

I think it would be good to leave it as it is now, but have the final race of the season be a single elimination bracket. That would be fun. it'd give someone that was a couple of places down a chance to jump up and take a BIG win!

That's how we run our races, but that's because we ante up $1 per car and winner takes all. When we first started running these races I thought that's how it should be run; however, after watching how these races have gone I like the current set up because it's exciting even if you have slower cars.

If you want to give tournament style a try, how about having it like the NCAA march madness. What I mean is instead of each person picking a few cars, have bracket created with rankings and cars then have each person pick their own winners for each race all the way up to the final. You can have points increase as they get closer to the final so even if you lost a lot of early races you have a chance to catch up if you still had a car or two still in it. You can even have a tie breaker by choosing the number of races you think each car will win in the final round. You can choose the rankings based on the results of this season. You can even add some unknown racers (untested cars) to keep us guessing.

This is just an idea, but it's getting me kind of excited just thinking about it. You can have a sweet 16, elite 8, final 4, just like NCAA hoops You can tell I'm an assistant high school basketball coach, LOL.

Let's get some feedback, let me know what you think and keep the ideas coming.

Hmmm...all this makes me realize what I should have done from the start...

Instead of having people pick cars to start, I should have made it that players pick the cars they think will win from whatever the match-ups are. Duh.

Kind of like what Bandeezee is saying with relation to the basketball stuff. So instead of players dictating to me which cars will be run, I'll create a new race (tournament or heads up) each week with X number of cars and then players just pick. The the next week it could be a whole new set of cars to choose from.

And thus my lack of fantasy sports knowledge shines through! I feel like an idiot now. Oh well, live and learn.

So that model is probably what will happen in season 2. It'll give me more control over the races from a management standpoint. Instead of 100+ races I can keep it more manageable and then even have more than one race/event per week.

Thanks guys...as usual, I over-thought this whole game. I'm happy with how it turned out though, it's a lot of fun seeing these cars go at it. One nice thing about the garage dictating is you see the same cars each week move up through the ranks and see surprises and upsets.

Lots to think about and consider now. But all for the better!!!

Yeah, I agree with you in us voting on who we think will win, but I also am happy we started the way we did. This way we got to see how fast the cars are by using this rating system.

The nice part is I don't think we have to abandon the rating system. Because it's based on individual performance per opponent, the ratings can still stand and continue to calculate.

I think this will actually help under a new tournament style because just like in real sports, you have an idea of how the teams are *supposed* to perform, but that doesn't mean they will on game day. Same here...the ratings give you a clue.

This tournament method with random brackets will also cycle through cars much quicker, so we'll see some cars that otherwise might not have gotten picked.

I'm sketching out things for this improved system and I'm excited. I'll post some final thoughts and want to get everyone's feedback on it.

Another bonus, I think this might encourage more people to donate cars. Maybe I'm alone on this, but I'd really like to see a car I donated win it all I guess it's pride, but there's just something about submitting your own winning car, LOL.

I guess if you think about it, we can donate cars now and be proud of them winning too. Either way, I can't wait until my car gets added, lol.

I really like the idea of bringing new/different cars into each tournament. With a new batch of cars in each new tournament you can't be sure which are the ringers. That will make the voting more challenging and interesting.

Hmmm...all this makes me realize what I should have done from the start...

Instead of having people pick cars to start, I should have made it that players pick the cars they think will win from whatever the match-ups are. Duh.

It's OK. I have lots of projects and stuff that I started and I may have missed the target. Live and learn!

Thanks!