CFR Organized Play 2025 Season

Don Tatum won Redscape's second tier.  Then completed a comeback to win P1 after trailing Tim Mossman after 2 races.  Combined that gave Don enough points (97.75) to overcome Tim Baker (80.25 pts).  Rando rounds out the top three this season with 77.88 points.

The four top events on the calendar were won by four different drivers this year.  So the championship came down to their next best finish and Don was the only driver to win a top tier event and a 2nd tier event.

Don becomes the first driver to win three CFR OP Titles -- having won in 2018 and 2019.  Don also extends his record streak of 9 straight top 10 finishes in the OP rankings.  Michael Polcen's streak ended this season at 7 in a row.

• Full Driver Rankings
• Series Report

2024 Organized Play Crowns Another Back-to-Back Champ

 Congrats to Jason Schultz.  He was in the driver's seat with only the WBC really in play and he took care of business.  Winning WBC took Jason from probably the champ to running away with it.

Jason is now the 3rd consecutive, back-to-back champion in organized play.  Fellow, back-to-backers Don Tatum and Stephen  Peeples finished 2nd and 3rd this year.  And fellow champ Michael Polcen finished 4th.

Jason and Don were the only drivers to win multiple tournaments this season.  The big difference in their scores is that Jason won two of the biggest events while one of Don's wins was a smaller event.

Thanks to all who raced this year in a OP event (111 of you) and I hope to see you all for the 2025 season -- which is already underway.

2024 Organized Play Update

 I've finally done some data entry for this season of Organized Play... here are the top 10 with ~2 events to go.  (Full list here.)

The top 3 is a murders row of the winners of the past 5 OP titles.  Don leads currently but he should not feel very comfortable with that lead.

The two remaining events to score are my PBeM serieses and the WBC tournament.  Both are worth big points and Jason has a commanding lead in the top tier of the PBeM.  If he does win that series it will be worth nearly 57 points and would give him just over 91 on the season.  

If we assume Jason wins P1, there will probably still be an opportunity for the top 7 drivers on this list to make up enough points at WBC to end up at the top of the heap.  Assuming a similar turn-out at WBC to last year, the top spot will be worth almost 60 points.  

Of course, WBC will be over before my PBeM so there is also the potential for someone to win WBC and do just enough in their PBeM race to pip Jason (or Don).  Keep an eye on people who could get second in the P1 PBeM series (Jeff Harrington, Gianluca Lari, maybe Tim Mossman, theoretically a couple others) and people who could win or place 2nd in the Divoll and Reilly tier... (Robert Rund, Michael Polcen, Palmiro Matteini, Brent Fitz, and others).  If they win WBC they might have a shot at the title too.

Final 2023 Organized Play Ranking

 The 7th CFR Organized Play season is over and despite a new ranking system I think the champion is pretty obvious.  Jason Schultz was the only driver to win more than one event this year.  Jason actually won 3 of the 4 events entered.

Jason's big win was the Ikea Cup event -- a large Table Top Simulator tournament.  But four other drivers won comparable events.  The kicker was winning Divoll -- a tier 2 event in my PBeM series.  This was by far the best 2nd event result by any driver.

• Full rankings

Rookie of the Year

C Moratto gets the nod here after placing 4th in Redscape C4 in his first ever Organized Play outing.

Most Improved

Will McConchie made a big jump in his 2nd season in Organized Play.  Capping it off by winning the tier-4 Clark series.  This pushed his ranking to 27th, up 87 spots from last year.

Honorable mention to Tim Baker who jumped 42 spots up to 3rd in the rankings.  The biggest increase among drivers who finished in the top 20 this season.

Steward of the Year

Since I'm only really paying attention to events now, I'm going to hand this to Mr. Polcen.  Michael officially is in charge of two different series of events... the 4-race Redscape Ladder PLUS the Table Top Simulator hosted Ikea Cup event.  And I know Michael would acknowledge that he is mostly a proxy for the wonderful stewards that run various races in those series.  

Thanks to all stewards.

New OP Ranking Method

Some of you may know that I've been struggling this season to get caught up with CFR Organized Play rankings.  The two culprits I have identified is that I have been busy and past me constructed a pretty elaborate system for calculating OP rankings.

So I'm simplifying.  A lot.

I used to track every result from every race and calculate a whole series of things to try to judge relative competition.  Now I'm just going to track the results of events and I'm going to use a simpler method to judge competition levels between different events -- more or less just counting the number of participants.  More here.

This makes my work much more manageable.  And so an in-progress 2023 season rankings is here.

CFR 2022 Organized Play Concludes (Finally)

 

In the end, only 4 points separated the top two drivers this season.  With last year's champion Stephen Peeples just edging out former two-time champ Don Tatum.

The rest of the top 10 was a mix of regulars and break-throughs.  Michael Polcen runs his streak of top 10 finishes to 5 seasons (1 short of Don's 6 seasons).  Chris Long and Tim Mossman have had multiple top 10 seasons before but Tim was 40th last year and Chris hasn't been top 10 since he finished 3rd in 2018.  James Benham made his first top 10 last year.

Jason Schultz ended the season 20 points behind our champion but in only his second season of organized play.  Will Kennington, Justin Swaine,  and Brent Fitz also made their first appearances in the top 10 this year.

• Complete 2022 Rankings

But lets dig into how Stephen beat out Don this year.  Below is a break-out of how each of them got points this year -- their top 5 race results and their top 2 tournament results.  And some general data as well.

That general data tells an interesting story.  Stephen beat Don despite Don winning more races (and even a higher percentage of races) and more tournaments.  But you can also see the first clue here of how Stephen overcame that -- tougher competition.  By design a field rating of 1 should be average (the median race field rating was 0.97 this year).  So we can see that Stephen's average race was considered above average in difficulty of competition while Don's was -- on average -- considered below average.

This doesn't mean that Don was racing against shlubs.  What it really means is that most of Don's wins came against smaller groups of opponents and/or not the very best of competition  Below are the top 11 races, ranked by field rating this year.  

As you can see, Stephen won 4 of those races.  Don won 2.  Stephen also had a second place in one of these races.  In fact, those are the five results that add into Stephen's score for the year.  Because the points you get for results in a race are multiplied by the field rating of that race, you can see how Stephen ended up with more points than Don.

To find Don's other wins, we scroll down that list a little.

Don's 3rd best win was against decent competition but not the very best.  A bit further down the table, Don's 4th and 5th (... and 6th) wins were against smaller fields.  Anything less than 8 people is considered a smaller field and will tend to have smaller field ratings.

That last bit is based on my most recent adjustment to the scoring (see this post for some detail on that change).  And yes, this change was made mid-season as I saw more than the usual number of smaller fields seem to really skew results.  I acknowledge that this might be controversial.  But I will have more to say about that in a future post.

For now, lets congratulate Stephen on his #1 ranking and Don for another outstanding season.

The Regulars

Don Tatum participated in what I am going to assume is a record 35 races this season (and season high 6 different tournaments).  That comes out to 40% of the number of races Don could possibly have participated in (and almost 40% of the tournaments).  Will Kennard participated in 28 races and Kevin Keller in 25.

Rookie of the Year

Rookies did not show prominently in the rankings this season.  But Chris Manning gets the nod by ranking 68th in his first season, powered by a 2nd place finish in one of the the two races he participated in.  Andrew Koerber was  close runner up at 70th.

Most Improved

Doug Galullo had a down year in 2021.  Having been ranked as high as 2nd in 2018, he fell to 97th last year.  But bounced back this year to 17th.  Much more his usual territory.  Honorable mention to Jason Schultz Who won 6 races this year and jumped from 73rd ranked last season to 3rd this season.

Steward of the Year

This is probably my favorite award.  Stewards make CFR happen.  Especially organized play.  I try to find new people to highlight every year but in a first... (I think) a repeat for Brian DeWitt.  Brian not only has people nominate him every year... he ran a very impressive 12 races this year.  Often as double-headers.

Other Numbers

This season saw a record number of races in organized play at 87 -- 4 more than 2020.  And a larger increase in the number of racing opportunities at 53 -- up from 45 in 2019.  Many tournaments are set up such that you can't race in every race because there are effectively or literally multiple races going on at the same time, the number of racing opportunities is always a bit lower than the total number of races.  The total number of drivers participating in organized play was up from last year to 122 from 104.  But 122 is still down from the 219 high of 151.  Field size shrunk this year from 9.4 to 8.3.  Field size has generally been shrinking over the last 10 years or so.  Although it had held pretty stead around 9.5 drivers per race from 2017 through last year.

2022 Organized Play Update and a Ranking Tweak

We are well into the 2022 CFR Organized Play season and I've updated the rankings.  Finally.  Thank you for your patience.

• Full CFR OP Rankings

Note that these rankings do not account for the 2nd races from my series.  Updates from those races will occur when all results are in.

A note on the aforementioned ranking tweak.  I noticed as I was entering race results that we had a larger then usual number of low player-count races -- 4, 5, 6.  These results seemed to be skewing the rankings so I made a tweak to how I adjust race scores based on the field.  I used to simply use the average ELO of the top 10 drivers in the race.  This was designed specifically to not penalize people for smaller races.

Now, I'm taking the top 8 driver ELOs and dividing by 8.  So if there are fewer than 8 drivers in the race, it will not be worth as many points.  I am happy with this fix but there is another big consequence.  This spread out the value of wins a lot more than in previous seasons.  Most wins were pretty close in value, maybe with a difference of 2-5 points.  Now there is enough spread that there is some overlap in the total points for "bad" wins and "good" 2nd places.

I'm doing the same thing with tournament points now as well.  For tournaments I used to be looking at the average of the top 20 drivers.  Now I'm taking the top 8 divided by 8.  I haven't yet seen any 4 driver tournaments but this does mean that the top heavy tournaments will be worth more.  Which I think makes sense since only the top 3 drivers can get tournament points.  So the 18th best driver in that series is not too important.

Back to this year's rankings.  One result of the bigger point spread for wins is that there is still plenty of opportunity for the top drivers to improve their scores as the season closes out.  A high quality win could be worth 10 points or more to any of the top drivers and the top 4 drivers are all currently within 8 points.

So I'm going to be keeping a close eye on the top series in my PBeM.  Stephen P, Chris L, Don T, Michael P, and James B are all in that series and a race win there is a big win.  Stephen and James are also neck and neck for the series win.  That should set everything up nicely for the last tournament of the season at WBC 2022.

CFR 2021 Organized Play Wraps Up

 

A couple tourneys (mostly mine) ran longer than anticipated this season.  So this is later than usual.  By a month or two really.  But its wrapped and we can crown a champ.

2021 OP Champ: Stephen Peeples

Huge congrats to Stephen.  Stephen won 8 races this season -- the most of anyone and nearly half of the 18 races he participated in.  He also won 2 tournaments -- tied for the most tournament wins.  This season culminated a sharp rise to the top for Mr. Peepels who raced in his first ranked race in the 2018 season.  He was ranked 40th in the 2019 season and 6th last year.

Michael Polcen's top 5 races were slightly more valuable than Stephen's but Michael did not win a tournament this season -- coming in 2nd twice instead -- spoiling his bid for a 2nd title.

Dave Ling placed 8th officially but did win two of the more prestigious tournaments (Redscape's C1 and my P1).  But he won only 2 races all season plus only 2 other podiums to end up with fewer points for his top 5 races than the other drivers around him.

Defending two-time champ Don Tatum came up short of the three-peat but did continue his streak of ranking top 4 in all 5 of the OP seasons so far.

Complete Results

Most Improved: Thomas Van Hare

Thomas was ranked 98th last season and jumped up to 30th this season after winning a race and the Hamilton series this year.

Honorable mentions: Robert Rund has been ranked in the 40s for the last 3 season and really put it together this year for 7 wins and a tournament victory to end up 5th on the season.  Mike Greason moved up from 74th to 17th.  Kevin Harrington from 78th to 25th.  Kathryn Harley from 88th to 32nd.  Larry Dygert from 101st to 42nd.  Leon "Blacketo" from 120th to 64th.

Rookies of the Year: Curtis Milburn & Jeff Caldwell

I couldn't bring myself to single out one of them.  Curtis and Jeff finished ranked 44th and 45th, less than a point apart.  Curtis participated in 10 races.  He didn't win any but did grab 2 podiums.  Jeff only participated in 4 races and did no better than 5th... except for the race he won.

Steward of the Year: Brian DeWitt

I got a nomination for this award this season.  I don't think I ever have before and honestly should ask for them in the future.  As racing started to occur in person again this year, Brian offered up his house for the DMV series -- hosting double race-days with large scale cars and lunch!  I'm sorry I never made it.  Maybe next year.

Championship Formula Racing Organized Play Update

 Seventeen races and one tournament into the 2021 season and I'm putting out the first report using the new ranking method.  

Its early days but James Benham is in the top spot right now for 2021 after winning the Redscape Fall Squall series this weekend.  Your right-this-second top 10 and more detail at the links below:

• Full Driver Rankings
• Race Details
• Series Details

This could end up being a completely virtual season... depends a bit on what happens this summer.  So I expect that some drivers may not get as much racing in as they usually do.  But the opportunities for PBeM or TTS racing have increased since the pandemic hit so I anticipate a good season either way.

Keep racing everyone and I look forward to more results in the future.

Changes For 2021 Organized Play

The CFR OP Trophy

We have just completed the fourth year of Organized Play for Championship Formula Racing and the ranking system has largely remained the same over that period of time.  One of the main things I tried to do with the original system was to give different values to different races based on the competition.  In theory, a win against a bunch of strong competitors should be worth more than a win against a group of rookies.  The trick is judging the competition.

What I have done up to now is to count a driver's best race finishes over the last two years.  I would then use that value to judge that driver's ability.  The ability of the drivers in a race would add or subtract points from the value of that race.

The main problem with that concept is that it is circular.  If I win 5 races against relative newbies I'm going to look like a world beater.  But I can't judge the value of those wins until I figure out the value of those wins... 

I also had a siloed community problem.  If a group of drivers mostly race only against each other how do I compare them to others?

Late this season, I decided to try to improve the system.

Goals

My main goal was to try to improve the system's ability to value different races and tournaments.  Specifically and in relative order of importance:

• Improve the system's ability to value individual drivers
• Do something about silos
• Prevent radically high tournament ratings
• Create a more predictable and consistent ranking system
• Provide points for ladder sub-tournaments
• Rebalance tournaments in relation to races

Ratings vs. Rankings

CFR Organized Play is all about figuring out which driver had the best season -- what I would call a ranking.  It is not about figuring out who the best driver is -- what I would call a rating.  

This is a distinction that happens (perhaps unintentionally) in sports all the time.  The winner of the NBA Finals may not be the team that was arguably the best team in the NBA right now.  But it was the team that won the playoffs and thus had the best season as defined by the NBA.

The NBA and most professional sports leagues are able to easily ignore ratings when crowning a champion because they can fairly structure seasons and playoffs to give everyone a similar chance and similar competition.

CFR Organized Play does not do that, instead it simply observes everything going on as organized by various people and has to judge a champion.  This is where ratings come into play.  The system uses ratings to try to figure out how much value to give every race because it can not rely on some overall structure to keep things even.

I bring this up as a preface to talking and ELO and ratings because at the end of the day, these are just tools for trying to fairly figure out a ranking.  But driver ratings have never been goals in and of themselves for CFR Organized Play.  And... I'll talk about that more a little further down this page.

ELO to the Rescue

I've been using a ELO a lot over the last couple of years in a slightly related project to rank and categorize the best F1 drivers of all time (more on that much later).  So I felt comfortable using ELO as the basis of how good individual drivers are.  For those not already familiar, ELO can be used to figure out how likely one person is to beat another person based on the difference in ELO scores between the players.  After each event, the actual results are compared to what ELO thought would happen and adjustments are made to each player's ELO scores.

A complication with using ELO is that as described above, ELO works best if it is updated after every game or short event.  But I don't always get race results immediately after the race and PBeM races take months to end.  How does that work with ELO if in middle of that month long race, some of the drivers participate in 3 live, in-person events?  What's their ELO?

So, I decided that I would only recalculate ELO at the end of every season.  Every race that season would assume each driver had the ELO they started the season with.  I would then add up all of the ELO adjustments from their races that season and calculate a new ELO for next season.  I'm sure this means that my ELO scores are not as accurate as they could be, but I do not think calculating on the fly would be feasible.

Playing around with K

ELO calculations have a variable called K that tends to get tweaked by people who use ELO in different situations.  What I ended up doing with K is using it as a way to express my confidence in a particular driver's ELO rating which is how I ended up addressing silos.

First I wanted to measure my silo problem and make sure it exists.  So I crunched some numbers.  

So, yes.  Most drivers in a Detroit or San Marino race only ever race in those series.

In the charts on the right, you can see every community I identified and the percentage of "silo" drivers in an average race.  Red cars represent drivers who never leave that series and blue cars represent drivers who have participated in at least one race in another community.

Why is this important?  As good as ELO is, if two groups of game players never mix their ELO really only tells you how good they are within their community.  The less cross over, the less confident I should really be about the accuracy of an ELO score.  Lets think of it this way.

We have a chess tournament with 4 players.  The top 2 players end up playing each other while the bottom two end up playing each other.  If the opponents in this tournament never change ELO will tell you that the best and 2nd worst player at this tournament are equally good because they both won their games.  It will also tell you that the 2nd best and worst player are the same.  

Of course once you mix the opponents up it will not take ELO long to figure out what is really going on.

So what I wanted to do was change my K value depending on how confident I felt about ELOs.  What this does is reduce the amount a driver's ELO changes when racing against drivers who don't get out much.

I starting thinking about his from a community perspective.  But I figured out that it is really a bit more complicated than the chart on the right.  For instance, large ladder series like Redscape and P1 look very different if you look at the races at the top end instead of the bottom end -- where new drivers usually come in.

So what I ended up doing was calculating a K value for every driver in the rankings.  That K value is based on how many races the driver has raced outside of their main community.  A driver's K ends up being 5, 10, 15, or 20.

Remember that K values have no direct impact on rankings.  No one will get more points or fewer points from a race against drivers with higher or lower K values.  Also note that I'm not throwing any shade on Detroit and San Marino or any future outpost of CFR.

Smoothing out the Scores

So what am doing with all these ELO scores?  The average of the top 10 ELO scores in any given race define that race's score multiplier.  The average of the top 20 ELO scores in any given tournament or season define that tournament's score multiplier.  This is similar to how the system works now but with a couple important changes.  

First off, I'm not using raw ELO.  I assign the highest ELO in the land a value of 1.75 and the lowest a value of 0.5.  And then I scale everyone else's values in between.  ELOs above 1000 get to be above 1 while ELOs below 1000 are below 1.  These numbers are tweaked to provide hat I consider to be enough value difference without ending up with a race or tournament that has a really high or low value compared to everything else.

A corollary to the above scaling is that I'm no longer adjusting scores if the event is live as opposed to asynchronous and I'm not rewarding an event or race for having more or less drivers.  This should remove the possibility for people to game the system and makes things more straightforward and less complicated.

Also, because ELOs do not change mid-season, race and event scores will not change after the event is scored.  Because the current system was constantly adjusting the weight of races and events scores would change seemingly randomly over the course of a season.  This will make everything much more predictable and consistent.

What Value Tournaments?

The next question I wanted to deal with is how much a tournament should be worth in relation to races.  At the same time I also thought about how many races and tournaments should count towards the Organized Play championship.

There wasn't any magic or complicated math here.  I picked a bunch of different values until I ended up in a spot I liked.

Going forward only the top 3 finishers in an event score points and they score 1/2 the value of a race.  So, while the winner of a race will get 23 points times that races multiplier the winner of a tournament will gain 11.5 points time that tournament's multiplier.

In the end I decided that points from the top 2 tournaments and top 5 races seemed right still, so that stays as it was.

What Exactly is a Tournament Anyways?

At this point, I've dealt with all of the really important things I wanted to deal with.  But several people had brought up an interesting point.  In the 2 large ladder series, we have groups of people who participate in a series of races but do not get counted as a tournament of their own.  

So when I was tinkering with tournament points I kept this in mind and broke out a couple seasons of ladder series to see how this would go.  Going forward, I will be counting ladder sub-series as their own series and not part of the greater event.

It doesn't devalue the higher series and gives some tournament points to more people.

Math?

If you want some more formulas and math... check out this page.

2020 CFR Organized Play Ends

The 2020 season is complete... and what a season it was.

COVID cut short some in-person opportunities including the end of the San Marino season.  This is why no San Marino races are counted towards this season.  It also emphasized the value in PBeM's and prompted Redscape to experiment with Table Top Simulator which spawned a new tournament.

But you all are here to find out who won the title... 

Don Tatum

For his second consecutive title.  But this one was much closer than last year's romp.  Going into the final race of the year, Don was behind Bill Worrell who had dominated this season in Detroit.  And Don spent the majority of that last race in the back of the field with Tim Mossman threatening to win the P1 series as well.  Late in the race Tim's dice failed him and he DNFed.  That guaranteed Don the P1 title and those 62 pts put him 17 clear of Bill.  Interesting Rando ended up 2nd on the season after gaining 8 pts for his finish in P1.  Bill a close 3rd.

Great season everyone.  A few other awards:

Rookie of the Year:

Mickey Akins

Mickey won 2 races in his first season in Organized Play and finished ranked 16th.  Honorable mention to Tim "Kay" Klepaczyk who also won a race in his first season of Organized Play and finished with a rank of 30th.

Most Improved:

James Benham

James was ranked 103rd last year as a rookie.   He won 6 races this year and finished ranked 13th.  Honorable mentions to Brent Fitz who won 2 races in his 2nd season and moved up from 98th to 31st (67 spots); Mark Moellering who moved up from 97th to 33rd (64 spots) in his second season; and Kathryn Harley who moved up 52 spots in her 3rd season from 140 to 88.

• Full Rankings Here

Steward of the Year:

Michael Polcen

Redscape really pivoted nicely to Table Top Simulator this summer and have kept it up with a new TTS season this fall.  This is the second time Michael has been named steward of the year.

The 2021 season.

Quick preview that scoring is going to change a for 2021.  Don't panic, it is not earth shattering but I hope to address concerns I've had about my old system.  I'll have more to say about that soon.

CFR Organized Play 2019 Final Rankings

Don Tatum is the only driver to have finished Organized Play in the top 5 all three seasons.  He finished 2nd in 2017 and 4th in 2018.  This year he breaks through to become the 3rd CFR Organized Play Champion.

This was a season Don really ran away with.  Early in the season, it seemed that Tim Baker might give him a run (Tim ended the season 3rd) but by the time we got to WBC, really no one was in striking distance.

Don won 8 races this season (last season's champion Michael Polcen was 2nd with 5).  Don was also the only driver to win 2 events this season.  In the end he finished 50 points clear of runner-up Bruce Rae.  The 2018 season was decided by 6 points.  2017 was decided by 21 points.

• 2018 OP Report
• 2017 OP Report

Huge congratulations to Don.

• Complete 2019 Rankings, Race and Series Results

2019 OP Top 20

Rookie of the Year

Bill Worrell raced for the first time in CFR Organized Play this season and won the Detroit Season including 1 race win and several more podiums.  He finished the season 5th.  

There were 42 rookies to Organized Play this season out of the 151 total drivers ranked.  Only two others finished in the top 50: Scott Cornett who ranked 22nd this season and Phillip White who ranked 41st.

Most Improved Driver of the Year

Stephen Peeples participated in a single Organized Play race last season and ranked 125th.  He participated in 6 this season, including 2 wins to rank 40th -- a jump of 85 spots.

Steward of the Year

For the last two yeas, Chris Brandt has run two different events -- the in-person PresCon tournament as well as the local DC-Maryland-Virginia season.  He is the only person to run two events a year and both grew this year.  Thanks Chris!

Organized Play 2019 Home Stretch

People have noticed that I asked if any one could overcome Don's huge lead at WBC and failed to answer.  So, lets do that.

Note that this is a bit of a guess.  The numbers of points people could get winning races and the WBC event itself will depend on how many people attend.  However, assuming a slightly larger attendance then last year three people seem like they have a chance.

Tim Baker, Brian DeWitt, and Bill Worrell appear to have a shot.  Each would likely have to win a well stocked* qualifying race AND the Finals.

Meanwhile, Don has pretty much maxed out his points potential.  Pretty much all he can do to defend himself is win the finals so no one else does.  Unless lots of people do show up and the races end up being worth more than I have guessed.

* Depending on the heat, WBC qualifying races can have 6 or 7 participants.  More will typically mean more value for the race.

Organized Play Update and Clarifications

The 3rd CFR Organized Play season comes to close in a couple weeks after WBC ends.  Don is 70 points above every one else in the rankings.  Can anyone catch up?  First a quick reminder of how scoring works.  Later this week, I'll get to some thoughts on how this season can end.

Each player's score in organized play is 5 parts race scores and 2 parts tournament scores.  When a player has more than 5 races or 2 tournaments under their belt on the season, the best 5 or 2 are picked for this purpose.

Race Scoring
Every place from 1 through 10 in each race is awarded points: 23 for 1st, 18 for 2nd, 15 for 3rd... Those points are then multiplied by a field modifier and a live event modifier.

For example, Don's best race shown above got him 38.13 pts.  That race was a win in the 1st race of the top series of this year's Redscape PBeM.  In this case the race win value of 23 was multiplied by a field value of 1.658 = 38.134.  The event was not live and so did not get a live event multiplier.  If it HAD been a live, in person event it would have gotten an additional 1.19 live event multiplier

For example, the highest values race so far this season was my win in the 1st DMV race this season.  It had a field rating multiplier of 1.522 but was also an in person event and so it also had a live event multiplier of 1.19 -- total multiplier of 1.806 (1.522 * 1.19).  That means my win that race was worth 41.54 pts (23 * 1.806).

What is the Field Multiplier?  Lets go back to Don's best race.  The field multiplier there was 1.658.  That means that the field of drivers was 65% better than the median field of any race this season or last season.

How is that Calculated?  Every driver has a field rating that is the sum of their top 5 race results (without multipliers) from this season and last season.  For instance, Don's field rating is 115 because his top 5 race results are all wins worth 23 points (remember, no multipliers here).  After adding up all of the field ratings of all drivers participating, that total is compared to the median total to generate a percentage.

What is the Live/In Person Multiplier?  Its a bonus meant to compensate for it being a lot easier to get a lot of drivers involved in a PBeM rather than having them show up in the same place and time for a live event.  It is calculated by figuring out what the multiplier would have had to have been in the past to make live and PBeM's roughly worth the same.  Note that there is a different live multiplier for races and for Tournaments.

Tournament Scoring
The last two bits of a driver's score in organized play is the score from their top 2 events of the season.  If I participate in an event, be it a PBeM series or a local season of races or a weekend tournament at a convention, I will get points for the races I participated in AND also for my final ranking at that tournament.

Scoring for events works exactly the same as for individual races.  Well, except for two things.

1. The live event multiplier is slightly different... because individual races have been impacted less lately by the live vs. virtual divide than entire events have been.  So for this season the live event multiplier is 2.2.  
2. Also, the field rating is calculated a little differently in that the field rating is multiplied by the number of heats in an event.  So an 8 race season will get more love than a 3 race tournament.

For example, Don's best result in an event so far was his win of the DMV (DC-Maryland-Virginia) season.  The win being worth 23 points * .838 as the event had a field rating below the median (largely due to being fewer races than many events) * 2.2 since the event was a series of in person races = 42.4.

WBC Tracks Announced

The 20 space-long straight at Hockenheim

It is that time again, time to announce the tracks for WBC -- the last event of the 2019 Organized Play Season.  This is a great event and one I always recommend.  It is the largest single weekend event in CFR.

Chris Long continues his fine stewardship of this event and has selected the following tracks:

Q1 (yellow tracks -- favor running from the front)

• Suzuka (PDF map) was the finals at WBC last year
• Francorchamps 2007 (PDF map) last seen at WBC back in 2014
• Sakhir (PDF map) last seen at WBC back in 2013

Q2 (green tracks -- balanced)

• Speilberg (PDF map) never before seen at WBC
• Yeongam (PDF map) last seen at WBC back in 2016
• Silverstone 2010 (PDF map) never before seen at WBC

Q3 (purple tracks -- really favor running from the back)

• Sochi (PDF map) was the finals at WBC in 2017
• Shanghai (PDF map) last seen at WBC back in 2016
• Sepang 1999 (PDF map) last seen at WBC back in 2016

Finals (blue tracks -- favor running from the back)

• Hockenheim  (PDF map) last seen at WBC back in 2017

More Information

• about WBC
• event rules for WBC 

2018 P1 PBeM Season Recap

The latest season of my CFR PBeM P1 is over.  Lets review what happened.

A quick reminder that P1 is structured as a pyramid league (the bottom drivers from the top tier are demoted to the next tier down which is composed of more races and drivers than the tier above it... shaped like a pyramid).  P1 is the top tier.  Divoll and Reilly are the two 2nd tier races.  Ascari, Clark, Fangio, and Moss are the four 3rd tier races.  The winner of P1 in any given season is the league champion, so lets start there.

P1 Race 1 at Montreal [Full Race Report]
Don, Bruce R, and Tim B qualify 1-2-3 in a bit of a preview of the rest of the series.  Dennis qualified 4th and ran in 3rd for most of the first lap but he started the race with less wear then rest of the first 2 rows and started to feel it when Tim B passed him through the last corner of lap 1.  Tim B did a great job staying out of the traffic and ahead of the mid-pack.

Bruce spent 10 of his 22 starting wear in lap 1 to hold the race lead but Don crossed the line to start lap 2 only 2 spaces behind Bruce.  Bruce spent another 10 wear in lap 2 which built him a full turn lead on Don and Tim B but also left him with only 2 wear to nurse through his last lap.  Meanwhile, Tim B caught up to Don through lap 2.  Don and Bruce were both running cars with 20 accel and 20 decel (a set-up that does seem to work well at Montreal).  Tim ran a 40-40 car and that was where he was able to claw 3-4 spaces back from Don on lap 2.

A Championship Deciding 2 Corners

Turn 20, Don is Dark Blue, Tim B is Teal

One of the key decisions in this race came on turns 21 and 22.  Don and Tim B were side-by-side 4 spaces from the last corner of lap 2 on turn 20.

Don decided to go 120 and spend 2 wear in the corner.  Tim went 100 and spent 1 wear -- falling a space behind Don but saving a wear.

Turn 21

The next turn, Tim pushed his acceleration to go 160 into the first 120 space of the first corner of the last lap -- spending 2 wear.  Don went his top speed of 140 to spend 1 wear.

Turn 22

The two drivers would back off to maintain that wear expenditure on the next turn, but since Tim spent more wear to start the corner, he maintained a higher speed the next turn and passed Don.

Turn 23 -- Tim B into 2nd

Now with the same wear and a slower car, Don was never able to repass and Bruce looked like a sitting duck with his 2 remaining wear.  Although Bruce was able to stay in front until Tim eventually passed him through the hairpin (2nd to last corner of the race).  Don was never able to get past Bruce and finished 3rd.

P1 Race 2 at Melbourne [Full Race Report]
The second race of the season took us to Melbourne -- another rather tight track that played to in front runners' favor.  Tim B, Don, and defending 2-time P1 champ Doug G all built the same 40-40-160-8w car and all bid 7 or 7.5 for pole.  Doug took pole with Don rolling better dice than Tim to end up 2nd on the grid.  Bruce started the race 10th with a different strategy and ended the race 10th to seriously damage his title chances.  Doug maintained the lead after lap 1, but had 4 less wear than Don who sat only 2 spaces back.  Tim was a turn back and in 5th at this time.  Tim B got a big break mid lap 2 when Chris L spins from 3rd.  With Tim M running low on wear, Tim B moves up 2 spots on track in the first half of the lap.  Don also spends his extra wear to over take Doug for the race lead at roughly the same time.  Tim B's wear advantage pushes him past Doug G in the beginning of lap 3.  But with the same 4 wear at Don and the same car set-ups, Don is never really challenged for the race win.

Second is enough though for Tim B to enter the final race of the season 5 points ahead of Don.  Bruce R was the only other driver with any chance to claim the title and only if Tim B finished 10th or worse.

P1 Race 3 at Sepang [Full Race Report]
Sepang is a very different track than the first two this season but Tim B still bid and took pole.  Don started 5th and Bruce started 8th.  However, Tim got swallowed up at the start when Dennis and Chris A both went 120 to his 80.  By the time they left corner 1, Tim B was 4th and Don was up in 2nd.  Mid-way through lap 1 Bruce ended up in the race lead, Don was 4th, and Tim B 5th -- all within spitting distance of a title.

Don was the first to see his race go south as he damaged his brakes heading into the Hairpin for the first time.  Tim B would then damage his brakes into the first corner of lap 2.  Mid way through lap 2 Bruce still led but he had been burning wear doing it and Chris A was right behind with 7 wear more.  Don was starting to fall back as he was low on wear in addition to his now 20 brakes.  Tim B still had some wear but also was hampered by 20 deceleration.

As the final lap began, Bruce was still leading but Chris A had 5 more wear and was close behind AND Tim B was showing no signs of finishing 10th, especially with Don now bringing up the rear in a seriously damaged car.  The end of the race would end up being very dramatic as Bruce crashed half-way through the lap which eventually set-up a drag race between Chris A, Rando, and Tim M -- which Tim M won.

The lead Tim B had built up in the first two races held up despite his 8th in the final race.  Congrats to Tim B for winning the 2018 P1 Season.  Don would end up 2nd on the season despite his 9th in the last race.  Tim M's dramatic race win at Sepang would catapult him to 3rd on the season only 2 points behind Don.

P1 Overall Champ: Tim B (1st, 2nd, 8th)
Rest of P1 Podium: Don T (3rd, 1st, 9th), Tim M (6th, 5th, 1st)
Demoted: Mario A, Chris L, Dennis N (Chris A retired after this so only 3 needed to be demoted)

Now lets give some love to the lower tiers.

Divoll, Tier 2
Jeff H won the first race at Montreal by managing his wear before overtaking Chris on lap 3.  John would also pass Chris to take 2nd and force Chris into 3rd. [Full Race Report]

At Melbourne Jeff H and Kevin H led most of the way with Kevin taking the checkered flag and Jeff finishing 2nd to enter the final race of the season 11 points ahead of Kevin.  Franklin moved up from the back of the pack at Melbourne to finish 3rd. [Full Race Report]

Jeff's dominance over the first two races meant that he only had to finish 5th to guarantee being one of the top two in the series and get promoted to P1.  The second spot would be contested by other podium finishers Kevin, John, Chris and Franklin as well as Mike (who had a 4th and 5th) and Fabio  (who had only a slim chance to get promoted after two 7th places).

A lap in, Jeff was doing just enough to make sure he got promoted sitting 5th.  Meanwhile John was leading the race and looking like the contender who would also get promoted.  But in a couple turns, Franklin emerged from the pack in 3rd with 11 wear to John's 4.  Franklin would pass Fabio and John down the back straight on lap 2 and then drive off into the distance never to be challenged for the race win.  That put Franklin in the driver's seat to be promoted next to Jeff (who had now worked his way up to 2nd for a strangle-hold on the season title).  Kevin was the only driver who could over take Frankin on points without winning the race but he was mired down in 6th, eventually being overtaken by everyone on track before blowing up his engine within sight of the finish line. [Full Race Report]

Season Champ: Jeff H (1st, 2nd, 2nd)
Also Promoted: Franklin H (5th, 3rd, 1st)
Demoted: Scott H, Tony L, Mike H (only 3 demotions because only 9 drivers were in Divoll and a P1 driver retired).

Reilly, Tier 2
Consistency was hard to come by over the first two races in this series.  Michael P followed up his race win in Montreal with a 5th in Melbourne.  Bruno blew up his engine at Montreal only to win Melbourne.  Luca finished 2nd at Montreal only to end up 10th at Melbourne.  Doug S followed up an 8th place at Montreal with a 2nd at Melbourne.  Scott M was the only car with two podiums in the first two races with consecutive 3rd places.  Consequently those 5 drivers all had decent chance to get promoted -- in fact a race win for any would guarantee promotion. [Montreal Race Report] [Melbourne Race Report]

At the important entry into Sunway Lagoon, 5 cars were hoping to clear the corner before the back straight.  Interestingly that pack included only 1 driver who entered the race in the top 5 -- Doug S.  Kalvin, Doug S, and Jim O were the only three to clear Lagoon.  Then Doug S used the outside lane to take the Hairpin faster to overtake Kalvin for the race lead to start lap 2.  Doug S kept the lead the rest of the race despite some challenges -- mostly due to having a wear advantage over those challengers.

Meanwhile Michael P kept slowly moving through the pack having qualified in 10th.  He was 6th half-way through the race and ahead of the other top contenders for promotion.  Near the end of the race Michael over took several more cars to end up finishing 3rd and comfortably in promotion bu 2 points behind Doug for the series championship.  [Full Race Report]

Season Champ: Doug S (8th, 2nd, 1st)
Also Promoted: Michael P (1st, 5th, 3rd)
Demoted: Pepe S, Kalvin M, Jim O (only 3 demotions because only 9 drivers were in Divoll and a P1 driver retired).

Ascarii, Tier 3
After the first three races, three drivers sat atop the season standings -- Ciccio I, Palmiro M, and Turyko) separated by only 4 points.  So it looked like they would fight over the two available promotion slots although Stephen P had a shot -- especially if he won at Sepang.  [Montreal Race Report] [Melbourne Race Report]

Stephen started out on row 1 and quickly grabbed the lead.  Meanwhile Turyko, Ciccio, and Palmiro were all down in the bottom half of the grid.  If the race stayed like this Stephen would get promoted.  By the end of lap 1, Turyko had moved up and taken the race lead but Stephen was still lurking in 2nd with a lot of wear.  As the season's final lap began, Stephen was back out front with a lot of wear, Turyko was sitting in second with a bigger car, Palmiro was back in 7th and Ciccio was languishing in 10th.  Palmiro and Ciccio would have to get up to 3rd to dislodge Stephen from the 2nd promotion slot.  By half-way through the last lap Ciccio had thrown in the towl but Palmiro had worked his way up to 4th and looked to have the wear to get past Christina and/or Turyko.  A couple corners later Palmiro was 3rd and Stephen was left to hope either Palmiro or Turyko lost a place.  They did not and Stephen missed promotion by a single point.  [Full Race Report]

This ended up being a very competative group as two race winners (Stephen and Ciccio failed to advance).

Season Champ: Turyko S (1st, 4th, 2nd)
Also Promoted: Palmiro M (2nd, 2nd, 3rd)

Clark, Tier 3
The first two races of the season had the exact same podiums: Justin S, Dave L, Dave B.  [Montreal Race Report] [Melbourne Race Report]

This meant that Justin was guaranteed a promotion regardless of what happened at Sepang and Dave L had a leg up on Dave B for that 2nd promotion.  Dave B had to finish top 2 and hope Dave L finished 6th or worse.  At the end of lap 2, Dave L was languishing down in 6th but Dave B was running low on wear and took a chance through the hairpin resulting in a crash and Dave L's promotion to tier 2.  [Full Race Report]

Season Champ: ?S (1st, 1st, 6th)
Also Promoted: ?L (2nd, 2nd, 3rd)

Fangio, Tier 3
Stephen E won the first two races of the season to clinch a promotion with a race yet to go.  Bruce L had a leg up on everyone else for the 2nd promotion slot after finishing 3rd in Montreal and 2nd in Melbourne.  But if he faltered at Sepang literally everyone had at least some chance for promotion.  [Montreal Race Report] [Melbourne Race Report]

John G was the first to take the reins in this race and spent some wear to take the race lead and 2nd place in the season standings up through the last corner of lap 1.  Will K out accelerated John across the start/finish line to being lap 2 in the race lead and now Will was 2nd in season points.  All this time, Tom F had been lurking behind John and then Will and conserving his wear before over-taking both of them through Berjaya at the half-way point of the race.  That put Tom just barely in 2nd on the season.

As the cars exited corner 1 for the last time, Tom was a turn ahead of everyone and would not be caught.  But his promotion would depend on where others' finished.  Stephen and worked his way up to 2nd and had enough wear to hold off John and Will (who could have gotten promoted with a 2nd).  Bruce was in 5th and needed to get to 3rd place to beat Tom on season points.  Bruce managed to work his way up through the field during the 1st half of the last lap before finally passing John for 3rd through Berjaya.  Bruce was then able to set himself up to clear Sunway Lagoon a turn ahead of the pack and would coast to 3rd and promotion -- only 3 points clear of Tom.  [Full Race Report]

Not to be lost in his early clinching of 1st on the season, Stephen also had the most successful run this year in any series with two 1sts and a 2nd.

Season Champ: Stephen E (1st, 1st, 2nd)
Also Promoted: Bruce L (3rd, 2nd, 3rd)

Moss, Tier 3
Keith R, Dave I, and Mikael M entered the final race of the season within 4 points of each other with two other drivers behind them also having a chance for promotion (Federico S and Robert R). [Montreal Race Report] [Melbourne Race Report]

Most of the smaller field would stay in a pretty tight pack until the start of of the final lap with previous race winners Keith R and Dave I 1-2 in this race and the season and in line for promotion.  By the time they reached the back straight both were a full turn ahead of the field and seemingly locked into promotions -- until Keith broke his damaged engine.  That knocked him from what looked like a guaranteed 2nd  and guaranteed promotion (Dave was going to pass him down the back straight but I'm pretty sure no one else could).

That added some drama to the end of the race.  Mikael inherited 2nd on the season when Keith DNFed but Mikael got passed by two cars down the back straight and Robert had worked his way up to 2nd -- putting Robert tenuously in 2nd on the season... until Mikael out accelerated Federico across the line to regain a position, a point, 2nd on the season, and a promotion.  [Full Race Report]

Season Champ: Dave I (4th, 1st, 1st)
Also Promoted: Mikael M (3rd, 2nd, 5th)

CFR 2019 Rankings Begin

Lets start the new year by getting some Organized Play rankings out.  I've been behind getting races recorded but caught up recently (well, mostly).

Our current top 10 shown on the right.  More detail and all the drivers here:

• Driver Rankings
• Race List

117 drivers have participated in a race so far this year.  Already more than participated in all of 2017.  Interestingly, average field size has grown to just above 10 drivers per race after 5 consecutive years of decline.  Last season a race averaged 9.2 drivers.

More importantly, lets look at Don's crazy 1st half of a season.

Four wins (most so far) in nine races and every win has been against good competition.  From each of those 4 quality wins, Don picked up at least 30 pts.  No one else has more than two races where they got 30 or more from their win.

On a related note, I added something to the race list.  I now list the points gained by each driver that podiumed in every race so you can get a sense of how people got their race points.  I'll duplicate this for tourney once a tourney ends.

Speaking of tourneys... no driver has any points from them yet because I have not gotten results from any (well, actually I just got results from the Detroit series, but don't have the final race for that season yet).  When those come in things may get tighter up top.  Despite Don's impressive run, Tim Baker is doing almost as well but has just participated in fewer races so far.  Tim's two wins have been worth 30+ points and Tim is leading Don in both the P1 and Redscape online series which have been two of the top three series the last two years running.

Still lots of racing to go so it will be very interesting to see how things progress.

Changes for 2019 CFR Organized Play

2018 OP Champ Getting His Trophy

But before we get to the small change for the 3rd season of Organized Play, a quick note wrapping up the 2nd season.

I have the good fortune to live not far from the 2018 Organized Play Champion Michael Polsen and saw him at the Congress of Gamers Fall session.

Before the CFR race, I presented him with the trophy.  Michael is a great guy, huge supporter of CFR, and I couldn't be happier that he won last season.

I think he was pleased with the award and I thought I heard him say he could retire happy now.  Of course, he then proceeded to win the CFR race so I doubt he really is retiring.

2019 Change

The only change I am making for the 2019 Organized Play season is that I will now count a driver's top 5 races towards their ranking points.  For the first two seasons I counted only the top 4 races.

Quick reminder of how OP scoring works
Each driver gets a score for each race based on their finish and how much better or worse than average the field was.  Fields are rated based on the (now) 5 best (unadjusted) finishes for each driver in the field.  Similarly, each drivers gets points for each season, series, or tournament they enter based on their finish in the tournament and the quality and quantity of the competition and the number of races involved.  The top 5 race results and top 2 tournament results are added to together to get your score.

Why?
Over the last two years, to contend for the OP Championship you likely needed to score points in two events and race in four races.  Really, you needed to do well in two events and four race -- probably really well -- but you get the idea.

I set those numbers based on the idea that I wanted a decent number of people to be able to contend for the title, not just people who could do 10+ races a year.  But with more people participating and twice as many racing opportunities occurring I looked over the numbers a little to see if 4 races and 2 tournaments still seemed right.

Below is a table showing how many people participated in at least a certain number of races and tournaments over the last two seasons.

In 2017, 37 different drivers participated in at least 2 tournaments compared to 44 last season.  Not a huge increase, and only 9 drivers participated in 3 or more tournaments.

In 2017, 57 different drivers participated in at least 4 races compared to 73 last season.  A bigger jump.  More importantly, I think 62 drivers participated in at least 5 races last season -- still more than the 57 who participated in 4 or more races in 2017.

What This Means
This will likely emphasize race results over tournament results a bit more than the past.  Although both will likely remain important.

All in all, I do not think it will change who is ranked well.

What About The Future?
In theory, I would like to take into account as many races as possible in order to accurately calculate that year's best driver.  But I also do not want to award that trophy to someone just because they showed up at a lot of races.  So while I could see these numbers rise again I will try to be careful not to over do it.

I also expect that the number of races and overall participation will plateau at some point.

Race Report: Congress of Gamers Fall 2018

Congress of Gamers provided another great Championship Formula Racing opportunity.  This time around we had 8 drivers on the 1985 version of Francorchamps (PDF track map).

I now have a trio of Francochamps tracks.  The modern version (PDF) which saw use in F1 starting in 2007.  The first short version (PDF) that was used only in 1983.  For this race we used the version raced between those two.  It combined the bus stop and la source layouts from the 1983 version with the start finish line from the modern / 2007 version.  I anticipated that the track would run more like its 2007 than its 1983 sister.

Michael Polcen and Don Tatum must have had similar thoughts, built cars with 100 start speed, and bid highest for pole.  Michael just won out that bidding with 5 to Don's 4.5.

Lap 1

On the right you can see Michael maintaining the lead through Radison and onto the track's longest straight.  Don follows closely behind.  Daniel Nace sits 3rd, Paul Bernhardt 4th, Jonathan Smith 5th, Will Kennard 6th, Me 7th, Dave Nace 8th.

Michael and Don ran an excellent race against each other over the 2 laps we ran.  If I had to nit-pick anyone's plot this was one that stood out.  Don could have used a slip this turn, and the outer line to end up right behind Michael for another slip.  It might not have mattered, but the space or 2 he gains from next turn's slip might have made a difference.

As it was, Michael held the lead through out lap 1.  Above, the pack races towards Bus Stop for the first time with Paul now in 3rd but a couple spaces.  Daniel sits 4th now.  I made up a couple spaces down the straight with my 180 top speed into 5th.  Will sits outside me after some slips.  Jonathan is behind me in 7th and Dave is right behind him in 8th.

Lap 2

The very next turn, Michael starts lap 2 in the lead with Don right beside him.  Paul is still in 3rd, but Daniel and I are right behind him.  I get past Daniel with my higher acceleration down to La Source.

For much of lap 2 there are two separate battles at the front of the field.  Don and Michael for the win.  Paul and I for the last spot on the podium.

Don gets past Michael early in lap 2.  But it feels like Don made a sub-optimal play just to try and break up Michael's rhythm.  In fact, I heard Don say something similar to Michael after the race.

Above on the left is Don leading Michael a couple corners into lap 2.  By Les Combes, Michael has pulled even with Don.  Below, Michael has powered back into the lead.

Meanwhile Paul has continued to hold me off to keep hold on 3rd.  But the field is doing its best to contest that position too.

With bigger top speed, brakes, and more wear I would finally get past Paul through the final corner.  But neither of us could challenge either Michael or Don for the win.

No retirements and a fun time had by all.

Driver	Q (bid)	Start Speed	Finish
Michael Polcen	1 (5)	100	1
Don Tatum	4.5 (2)	100	2
Doug Schulz	7 (1)	20	3
Paul Bernhardt	5 (1)	60	4
Will Kennard	6 (1)	20	5
Daniel Nace	3 (2.5)	100	6
Jonathan Smith	4 (2)	60	7
Dave Nace	8 (0)	20	8

Analysis

Was that 1/2 pt of bid the difference between Michael and Don?  Was it that missed slip from Don early in lap 1?  Was it Michael's test to get to 180 down the straight with Don just out of slip position?

Hard to say for me, but it was definitely some excellent racing by both gentleman.

For myself, I have had decent luck with a 40 accel, 80 decel car on this track.  I decided for something a little difference and got some decent value out of the 60 accel.  I like running from behind on this track, but I know that this version and the 2007 version will likely spit out a winner from the front row and the best I can hope for is 2nd or 3rd.

Which leads me to like the 1983 version of Francorchamps best.  But only by a little.

CFR Organized Play 2018 Wrap-up

By my count 12 drivers had enough points to contend for the title of 2018 CFR Champion.  But only four of them were able to make the trek to the final tournament at the World Board Game Championships.

Doug Galullo entered the weekend with a solid points lead after having won the largest online tournament (P1) and the smaller in-person tournament held at PrezCon in addition to winning 3 individual races.

Don Tatum was 2nd in the standings -- trailing Doug by less than 40 points -- a sum he could make up if he won WBC.  Chris Long and Michael Polcen were also contenders.  Ranked 4th and 5th respectively before WBC they were separated by less than a point in the standings and trailed Doug by roughly 43 points.

Qualifying at WBC was dominated by three drivers.  Chris Long won all three heats he was in while Tim Mossman and Doug Galullo each won 2 heats.  No other driver won a qualifying heat.

Going into that final race of the season the top four drivers on the season all had some shot at the title with Doug sitting at 190.34 pts, Chris with 170.53, Don at 147.28, and Michael Polcen at 143.23.  If any of those four drivers won the race they would also claim the Organize Play title.  Doug probably could have finished 2nd to anyone but Chris and still won the title.

Tim Mossman was also in that final race and had climbed the rankings to 9th after his WBC qualifying run but still sat nearly 80 points behind Doug.  Not even the win at the WBC finals would have vaulted him to the OP title.

Organized Play 2018 Top 20

In the end Michael Polcen did win the WBC Finals, took home the plaque for that event, and edged out Doug Galullo for the 2018 Organized Play Title by 6 points.  Chris Long ended up 2nd in the race.

WBC was representative of Michael's whole season -- characterized by excellent timing.  Michael did not win a qualifying heat but a 2nd and 3rd got him into the finals.  In fact, Michael won only 3 races all season.  Three race wins is nothing to sneeze at but Doug and Chris both had 5 wins on the season and several other drivers picked up 4 wins this year.  But Michael picked excellent races to win.  The WBC Finals rated as the most competitive single race all season.  Michael also won the 5th most competitive race this season (race 2 in the top tier of Redscape).  Michael also won two tournaments including the 2nd (WBC) and 3rd (Redscape) most competitive events of the year.

Doug Gallulo was a worthy runner-up.  Doug won 5 races and 2 events and is one of two drivers to finish top 5 in OP both years.  Chris Long came up just short of the OP title this year and also won 5 races this year.   Despite the 5 race wins, he finished 2nd in two tournaments -- WBC and P1.  Michael, Doug, and Chris ended the season with a mere 12 points between them.

• Complete 2018 Rankings, Race, and Series Results

Rookie of the Year
I erased some of my older rankings data so the definition of a rookie has changed a little this year to mean having not participated before in an official Organized Play event.  By which count 70 drivers of this years 144 were rookies and 8 placed in the top 25 on the season.

But Gainluca Lari was clearly the best of that bunch.  He did not race once in the inaugural OP season of 2017 but won 4 of the 10 races he participated in this year and won the San Marino season to end up 5th in the rankings!  Honorable mention to Gary Sturgeon who won 2 races and won the Detroit season this year to finish 9th overall.

Most Improved Driver of the Year
Mike Aubuchon had a difficult 2017 -- scoring points in only 1 race of the 5 he participated in.  Mike came back strong this year -- finishing 2nd in a WBC qualifying heat and 3rd in the WBC finals to improve his rank from 85th last season to 29th this year.

Honorable mention to Claudio Orlandi for improving 41 spots this year from 79th to 38th.

Steward of the Year
Every year is a tough year to pick out a steward for special recognition.  This year saw many new seasons spring up including Detroit and San Marino and Washington DC.  The time and effort of every steward is the reason this community continues to grow.

But this year, I'll tap Chris Long as Steward of the Year.  Chris runs what is easily the largest in-person tournament on the calendar -- regularly involving two or three races running simultaneously.  Chris also went through a lot of effort this year to collect feedback and input to make sure that his event was as good as it can be.

• Last Year's OP Report