Month: January 2018

In addition to Should Your Fantasy NASCAR Team Entry Carry Over Each Week?, the second most questioned tweak to the rules that Yahoo! Fantasy Auto Racing had in their game is our suggested reduction of driver starts from 9 to 7.

You can see in our rules for the Driver Group Game it says this regarding maximum starts.

Maximum Starts

Each driver in the Driver Group Game can be in the ‘Starter’ position of your team in no more than seven races. For the purposes of this game, a driver must be in the ‘Starter’ position for a race (not during qualifying) in order to be charged with a race start. Likewise, a driver who is on your team but stays in the ‘Bench’ position during the race does not get charged for a race start.

Once a driver has reached the seven-race limit, he will no longer accumulate any fantasy points for your team even if he occupies a ‘Starter’ roster spot. This limit does not change no matter when you join the game.

Your driver’s start totals will not reset at the segment divisions of the season. If you start your driver seven times during the first segment of the season, he will not be eligible to earn ANY fantasy points (qualifying, finish or lap points) for the remainder of the season.
If a driver is on your roster in a ‘Starter’ position for a given race but does not drive in that real-life event, he will not be charged with a race start. But, you will also not earn any points from him. The number of races each driver has started for you will be listed along with all of his other stats.

Does It Make It More Competitive?

The underlying reason our group suggested to reduce it to 7 starts is to make the game a little more competitive. Historically, in the Yahoo! game there were drivers in the A and B groups that got very little use if some drivers were dominating. At 9 starts per driver you could essentially use just 4 drivers from each group for the entire season (9 starts x 4 drivers = 36 races).

Reducing it to 7 starts seems a minor tweak, but it does force you to use at least 6 of the 8 drivers in each group. (7 starts x 5 drivers = 35 races. Plus, 1 more driver used 1 time to equal 36 races.)

We Want Your Vote And Feedback!

When I sent the first ‘update’ email to those that signed up I got plenty of replies regarding this. Rather then surmise what I think the majority of fantasy NASCAR players want in this new game strictly from those emails, let’s open it for discussion here.

Please converse in the comments below this post the pros and cons. Also, vote 9 or 7 in the poll included here.

One of the two (the other one is about max driver starts) most talked about suggested changes we’ve made in our modification of the now defunct Yahoo! Fantasy Auto Racing game with our Driver Group Game is whether or not your team entry should carry over from week-to-week.

In the initial laying out of the game rules with fantasy NASCAR Experts Kyle Wiseman and Marlon Clark along with a new friend Mel F. we kicked this concept around.

Weekly Team Entry Does Not Carry Over

Your weekly team entry does not carry over from race-to-race. You need to confirm that you have selected drivers for your entry each week. You can select drivers for any future race at any time. This lets you plan in advance the drivers you want to use in the event you are unable to place them the week of the race.

The Driver Group Game also features a tool to show you exactly where you have placed each driver for past or future races to help you manage your future entries within the Maximum Start restriction.

The deadline to add drivers from each corresponding races’ team entry is 11:59 p.m. PT on the night before qualifying. If you don’t add drivers by this deadline, your team will remain empty.

Two Points Of View

1. If the teams DO NOT carry over from the previous week, there will be some empty teams. If a player forgets to set their team or has no access to a computer (for a variety of reasons) carry over would come in handy.
2. Remembering to set your team is part of the game! League commissioners can take the responsibility of reminding their league members to set drivers each week. Everyone these days has access to a computer, smartphone, or mobile device. It comes down to personal responsibility. Besides, picking 4 starting drivers and 4 bench drivers and leaving them in their lineup for 7 weeks straight without bothering to check the page is not really playing the game.

What About Setting Your Team Entry In Advance?

Does having the ability to set your team entry in advance change your position on this?

Also, the Driver Group Game has a tool for each player to view a summary of where they have placed each driver, whether it be completed races or future races.

We Want Your Vote And Feedback!

When I sent the first ‘update’ email to those that signed up I got plenty of replies regarding this. Rather then surmise what I think the majority of fantasy NASCAR players want in this new game strictly from those emails, let’s open it for discussion here.

Please converse in the comments below this post the pros and cons. Also, vote Yes or No in the poll included here.

As the 2018 NASCAR season approaches, tens of thousands are realizing Yahoo! has closed its game down. If you’re like me, you’d anxiously await that day in January when the message changed from “The Yahoo Sports Fantasy Auto Racing season has concluded” to the page announcing my favorite fantasy NASCAR game was open for the new NASCAR race season! I could begin to re-connect with my online friends and start creating my groups and building my driver teams!

Not long into the transition from the 2017 to the 2018 Monster Energy Cup season these lines were added: “Thank you for your participation this year and congratulations to all the winners. We will not be offering Fantasy Auto Racing in 2018. We thank you very much for playing our game over the years and hope you will continue to play our other fantasy games.”

WHAT THE HECK Yahoo!?!?

It’s like waking up Christmas morning to find the Grinch has stolen all the presents!

18 years ago Yahoo! added Fantasy NASCAR Auto Racing to their repertoire of fantasy sports games.

Yahoo hosted games for their millions of subscribers that ranged from mainstream sports like football, baseball and basketball to niche sports like golf, hockey and college football and even oddball fantasy games for the Oscar’s, the Stock Market and even CBS’s Survivor!

During it’s heyday, I remember calculating that about 250,000 entries were entered each week in the Yahoo fantasy NASCAR game. It’s dwindled to around 40,000 entries now, but that is still a lot of people enjoying the game.

FANTASY NASCAR PLAYERS STILL WANT TO PLAY THIS GAME!

Currently, the 2nd ranked post on Yahoo’s User Voice forum is Where is NASCAR on your Daily Games? . Read through the comments and you’ll realize it was way more then the game itself, it was the relationships that went along with the game. Sure, we all want to be the Season Champion of our group. We all want to be in the coveted 99% percentile of all players. But, we also want to have the fun that is enjoyed by having others we can enjoy the great sport of NASCAR with.

YES, NASCAR IS GRAPPLING WITH A DIMINISHING FAN BASE

Numbers are down in many sports when you measure the attendance and the television market share. No doubt, NASCAR is in a critical phase of filling their fan base with new, younger fans. Fantasy NASCAR is an venue that lets old and young fans alike share in the excitement that only NASCAR brings. It is a glue that lets us stick to the sport. It fuels enthusiasm and interest through the week and especially on race day.

It’s a sad situation that the economics of hosting a fantasy NASCAR game is not worth it to Yahoo! and Fox. Pay-to-Play games like the weekly Draft Kings games are taking over the space.

DISCOURAGED. SCARED. FILLED WITH ANXIETY.

That’s how I really felt deep down when I saw Yahoo! fantasy auto racing was not coming back in 2018.

Why? I’ve spent the last 12 years building Fantasy Racing Cheat Sheet. From day one the primary goal has been to be the best NASCAR statistical tools web site useful for all types of fantasy NASCAR games. But, my strongest focus has always been to help players of the Yahoo fantasy auto racing game!

OUR YAHOO-CENTERED FEATURES

• Jeff Gutowski has written hundreds of his NASCAR Fantasy Preview articles here that put a prime focus on the Yahoo game.
• Our Experts Picks page, that lets you play along with the experts and contribute to the ‘wisdom of the crowd’ picks, features not only the top-5 and dark-horse drivers, but our weekly Yahoo A, B and C driver groups experts picks.
• My Custom Driver Groups feature was born out of a desire to group the full statistical table of drivers into their Yahoo A, B, C driver groups. Subscribers can create their own groups, but the Yahoo group was built in each year by default.

PRAYERFULLY CONSIDERED MY OPTIONS

Thankfully, I quickly came to realize that this is a great opportunity!

I rallied (am still rallying) together with a few guys that have been a great help to me through the years and we hashed (still hashing) through the small tweaks we felt that could make the A, B, C driver group concept game that Yahoo pioneered even better.

I’m coding the game now and anticipate a beta test with a small group of die-hard fans of the game. The game is FREE TO PLAY. A paid subscription to Fantasy Racing Cheat Sheet is not required!

Just create an account with the $0 forever plan and you are in.

INTRODUCING THE DRIVER GROUP GAME

Currently, I’m referring to our version of the game as the Driver Group Game. It’s more functional than anything else, but it will stick until someone comes up with something better. You can read the Driver Group Game rules and see the drivers in each group here.