Crispybits, Tyres G Johnson - Strategy RVP
Latic Tyres: Baines, Strategy: Berbatov
Richt Tyres: Hart, Strategy: N'Zogbia
Scoffw Tyres : A Cole, Strategy N'Zogbia
Adrian Stuboy Tyres: Peter Cech, Strategy: Suarez
Jamie Calvinsuari: Tyres A Cole - Strategy RVP
CanaryYellow Tyres: Terry, Strategy: Lampard
Tacalabala - Tyres: Reina, Strategy: Maxi
Digsby: Tyres Koscielny, Strategy van Persie
Roga: Tyres Cech, Strategy Berbatov
Jensen BFM : Tyres Baines, Strategy Tevez
blah: Tyres: Reina, Strategy: Maxi
Pink_Elephantz: Tyres A.Cole, Strategy Torres
Bossdrum Senna : Tyres Van der Sar, Strategy Kuyt
Colbert: Tyres Hart, Strategy Lampard
Sebastien Burightwater: Tyres A Cole, Strategy Lampard
Heikki Disco: Tyres VDS, Strategy Lampard

Just a little change to my picks with the news VDS is probably not playing this week

Report from the last race will be up later on today

damm me for being on nights & not up to hear that info!!!

Belgian Grand Prix Race Report

Welcome to Spa Francochamps everyone, for the penultimate race of the season. It's a typically Belgian day with blue skys dotted with big, fluffy white clouds that give just the hint that they might decide to make life interesting for the drivers at some point. But these clouds are to witness the drivers making life interesting for themselves first.

The red lights go out and the grid starts moving, with pole-sitter Michael Scoffwacher getting overtaken off the line by Kubica, who makes a brilliant start from the second row of the grid. But they don't even make it to the first corner before the red flags are waving to stop the race. Further back on the grid during the start it would appear as though Lewis Digsbyton has spun his back wheels up on pulling away and one of the tyres has come loose from the rim and sent him sideways. Calvinsuari gets away well enough beside him to avoid the incident, but he's sideways on right in the path of Rubens Blahblachello. Blah tries to hit the brakes but Stuboy doesn't react in time right behind him and all three drivers end up blocking the track and unable to move. The rest of the grid manages to avoid joining the carnage and pulls back round to the pits to wait for the mess to be cleared away and the race to be restarted.

On the second start Kubica can't repeat his flyer and Scoffwacher gets into the first corner in the lead, followed by Discovaleinen, Burightwater and Kubica in 4th. Further down the field Bossdrum Senna has moved up 5 places in the first few corners.

The sensible strategy looks to be a 2 stopper, and there's not a lot of drama since the start as we approach the first round of stops. Scoffwacher comes in first, followed by Burightwater and 5th placed Pedro de la Roga on the same lap. Soon everyone is through their stops, with the earlier stoppers seemingly gaining a slight advantage. Jenson Beerfuelledman and Nico Richtberg are two of the last ones to come in and end up dropping down the field significantly because of it. Sneaking under the radar and up to 6th on track is Giancanaryellow Fisichella, who hasn't made any stop druing that phase of the race.

He eventually does come in and pit, but only about 5 laps before the 2 stoppers make their second stop. This could put him in a great position if he really can make it with only one stop!

Tacalabauli comes in first for his second stop 3 laps later, getting out into clean air. Shortly after him the rest of the field make their second stops. Again the advantage seems to go to the early stoppers, with Tacalabauli gaining strongly from the pit-stop shake-up to move into the top 10.

Once the pit stops are over perhaps the most surprising news is Fisichella's position, having moved up to 9th position, just behind Tacalabauli how has turned up in 8th. In front of them Abumieso and Crispybitshok are having a long struggle for 6th place, with each having held the 6 championship points for a number of laps during the race. Tacalabauli and Fisichella quickly catch them up, and when Crispybitshok makes an attempt on Abumieso that goes a bit wrong, costing him his front wing and giving Abumieso a puncture, Tacalaubauli and Fisischella pass them, Tacalabauli giving Crispybitshok a grateful wave and thumbs up as he does. Crispybitshok can be seen pointing to the "Spring 16" sponsor logo on the side of his car and winking. God only knows what that was all about.

Out in front Scoffwacher has held the lead from the first corner and never looked in danger of losing it, and holds a comfortable 25 second lead going into the last lap. Behind him is Kubica, followed by Discovaleinen, Burightwater and de la Roga. Rounding out the top 10 behing Tacalabauli and Fisichella is Calvinsuari, who just avoided being caught up in the starting line incident, Latici who is putting on a good run of late season points finishes, and Bossdrum Senna brings up the back of the points scorers with a great drive from 19th. We'd all be raving about him today if he hadnt just been outdoen by Fisichella's innovative 1 stop call.

Just as the chequered flag is waving, the sky opens up and a torrential downpour starts up. Looks like Scoffwacher was too fast even to be beaten by the weather today!

Good luck in the last race of the season in Britain everyone! 7 drivers can still claim the test season title this season so it should be a decent race!

Not sure it built up any suspense, but I've been sitting on the qualifying results all week ready to post them tonight in time for tomorrow's decisive day.

Anyway, they are up. Michael Scoffwacher continues his excellent end of season form with the pole, and if he wins or comes 2nd he will guarantee the title. His 3 closest challengers are all just outside the top 10. Adrian Stuboy's slim title hopes appear to be over with a disappointing 20th place on the grid. Should the race finish in these positions then Scoffwacher will be champion.

The best strategy/tyre call this week got Nico Richtberg a well deserved 3rd place. Joint second best were Scoffwacher (can he do no wrong!) and Jenson Beerfuelledman.

Good luck tomorrow everyone

Hopefully no Prost/Senna Suzuka style antics at the first corner.

Might just have scraped a hat trick on the last day just for good measure.

British Grand Prix report.

Welcome to a rainy and grey Silverstone for a slightly dampened, but nonetheless exciting final race of the season. Thanks to a late season run of form Michael Scoffwacher goes into this race as the championship favourite, and he couldn't have asked for a better place to start the race from, sitting as he does at the very front of the grid.

There are 6 other drivers who can still take the title from him, although realistically Adrian Stuboy would need a truly amazing turn of events to get his name onto this season's trophy.

Everyone is starting on intermediate tyres, with the weather report forecasting a steady drizzle with occasional heavy showers later on in the afternoon.

Due to the poor visibility caused by spray the race organisers have decided to have a rolling start to this race for safety reasons, so the cars line up behind the safety car for the parade lap knowing that hey won't be stopping on the grid, but getting straight into the racing.

The field filters through the first few corners successfuly with nobody making any silly moves and catching themselves out. Giancanaryello Fisichella moves up from 12h to 10th thanks to other drivers slightly over-egging corners in the wet, and Jarno Tacalabauli is travelling in the opposite direction through the field after he has to take a line across the grass dropping down to 14th in the process.

The first two drivers to pit are Lucas di Gazwood and Nick Grimesfeld, both coming in on the same lap. As Grimesfeld pulls in in front of di Gazwood, it appears as if di Gazwood has some trouble slowing down to pit lane speed and he looks like he's about to hit Grimesfeld. Grimesfeld is aware of this and speeds up slightly, and di Gazwood swerves to avoid the back of his car, hitting the inside of the pit wall and wrecking his left front wheel.

The pit lane is closed for a couple of laps, and when it opens again Grimesfeld is given a stop and go penalty for speeding in the pit lane! His radio calls tell us he's not the happiest of men in that car, as he only came off the limiter to avoid being taken out by di Gazwood.

Further up the field Lewis Digsbyton is having a nightmare race. He just can't seem to dial into the wet track and is losing places almost every lap.

But at the front it's Scoffwacher, who has showed some excellent skills in these conditions in a small leading group that also includes two of his championship rivals Fisichella and Discovaleinen along with Jaime Calvinsuari. In fifth is Noco Richtberg, although he's struggling to keep pace with the front four. And suddenly he's definitely not keeping pace as he does a 720 spin coming out of the hairpin ending up facing the wrong way. Several cars get past him before he manages to get it straightened up again and heading back in the right direction.

Going into the last few laps and Giancanaryello Fisichella has the lead, followed by Calvinsuari and then Scoffwacher with Discovaleinen in fourth. As this stands it's good enough for a championship win for Scoffwacher but Discovaleinen is pressing him hard, and that pressure is finally starting to show. Two laps from the end Scoffwacher is passed for third by Discovaleinen.

Giancanaryello Fisichella takes he win in the race, and equals Scoffwacher on Championship points. So after 6 races the two drivers can only be split on countback.

Ladies and Gentlemen, it gives me great pleasure to announce that the winner of the FFPL test season 2011 is:

Giancanaryello Fisichella

Well done, and well done to Scoffwacher too, it came down to a single position on countback between the two of you.

Admin/technical/other notes to follow tomorrow

OK, some other notes:

Latic had the best race strategy on the last race GW with 13, with Richt and Colbert joint second best on 10.

I'm amazed that the championship went to countback, Canaryellow's best results of 2 first places just edging out Scoffw's first and second. This bodes well for next season. It's also worth a quick mention that Discogod only beat Scoffw to third in that last race on a tie-breaker (goals scored), it was all so very close in almost every way.

On the modifiers, I think that the last way of doing them worked out best. It gave everyone freedom to pick. It did add a bit of time to the admin, but it's only about 45 minutes to an hour in the qualifying week and 2 hours for the race week (including writing the report) so that's do-able. As mentioned before I'd probably be looking for some volunteers to write a few of the reports next season just for freshness of style and to give me a chance to have a little break from it (I know Tacalabala has said he'd like to do one, so I'm sure I can find 2-3 others too) I'm disappointed with the final race report (not my best effort) but I was struggling to find storyline material a bit at the end there. There's only so many times we can have a big crash in turn 1 or whatever before it becomes formulaic, and I was desperately trying to avoid going formulaic.

Next season I'll probably create a new thread for each race weekend and contain the picks, the qualifying and race results, the championship standings so far and the race report. This would allow me to start up picks early if there were GWs with only a couple of days in between them without having to slot the race report in and keep picking.

Any other thoughts on anything to improve/drop/keep much appreciated. How did you guys feel about how the modifier format ended up? Is there anything you'd add to the game for next season?

Still thinking about having teams and a constructors championship, but I can't think of any way in which it would be anything more than flavour to the commentaries and reports, and maybe a way to generate some extra rivalries. Any modifiers by team would have to be so well crafted so as not to throw the game out of balance.

So that's it - all over. Hope you've enjoyed it and look forward to seeing you all next season for more fun!

Amazing that it should go down to countback, as you say. Well done to Canaryellow indeed.

I really like the modifier you came up with, great idea. Regarding having teams, I'm definitely for having teams and although you know what my idea was crispy, I'll repost for everyone's benefit:

Players enter [the sidegame] by posting what car they are currently driving, or the last car they owned, by including the car's Wikipedia page. Depending on the overall make-up of the entrants, players are arranged into teams corresponding to their car model and manufacturer, i.e. Team Ford Fiesta Mk V, Team Vauxhall Nova, Team Hyundai. If players don’t own or never have owned a car, they can be randomly assigned to the aforementioned teams to top-up small teams. The size of teams will be either 3 or 4 drivers, depending on uptake.

To my mind, doing that would prevent people from forming 'dream teams', while making for quite random groups. There is, of course, nothing to say that bikers couldn't form their own teams, even different manufacturers if there are enough of them.

Taca - good call on making it so there's no chance of 'dream team' - that really spoils things for me i think if the top guys just pick each other.

Another modifier - could be if there is a choice of 3, 4 or 5 FPL teams to choose from before each gameweek. By that, pick some random teams that play FPL from the FPL memberlist & then each driver picks the team they think will score most points. Of course, we'll have no way of knowing what transfers each team has done also!

Great comp, really enjoyed it & of course i'm sure everyone loves seeing their name pop up from time to time.

YEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH !!!!!!!!!!!!

I have had a crazy few even numbered GW's in the last 5 weeks so i figured i would be doing well here.

Having guest writers is a great idea, just supply the results and modifiers and let peoples imaginations run wild. I would be happy to do one or two.

Been thinking on the teams thing during the day, and maybe a modifier style thing could work if I did (for example and thinking out loud here) teams of 3 (24 man field, 8 teams) and there are 4 phases in the season (GW 1-10, 11-20, 21-30, 31-38). Each team has one unrestricted player pick per driver for each phase.

This would mean that for every race each driver has their FPL 11 + 5 hand picked players, with the 2 individual modifiers locked in for 1 race weekend, and the 3 team picks locked in for 4-5. Teams could organise between themselves to all pick the same top form and value player, or just all call on their gut instincts, or arrange to take 3 different top players to cover any one of those players having a bad week. Tons of ways to do it.

If I really wanted to make it complicated I could give a different weighting on each track to the FPL 11 (driver skill) and modifiers (car speed). 50-50 is unmodified, but tracks like Spain where in reality it's more about the car than the driver it could be that it moves 60-40 weighting to the modifiers, and vice versa on tracks where it's more about driver skill (I have a feeling Laguna Seca may well be one of these in next year's calendar). Maybe complicating it a bit much there tho, currently it works because it's nice and simple to play (although apart from picking one extra player each every couple of months it wouldn't require anything extra from the players, just my spreadhseet is gonna start looking more complicated behind the scenes)

All that said I'm just bouncing ideas around now. I should probably stop before I get into giving penalty points if you own a player charged with a motoring offence, or something equally silly

Firstly, thanks for organising this. It's been good fun and there's obviously a lot of hard work gone into this - nice one

Just on this point, the admin for how it is now isn't too bad, even without automated data capture. I won't go into the boring details but if I did have 3 teams of 8 with the team picks I think it wouldn't add more than 2-3 minutes over and above what I did in those last 2 weeks for the pure admin. Forget the more complicated weighting idea after that, that was just my brain running away with me but isn't going to happen unless I get hit by a cosmic space beam that miraculously teaches me how to code it all automatically

Also, you're all going to be in a private league next year, and the majority of the admin time was spent clicking through FPL shortcuts to get your individual week scores, so that will also save a lot of time.

Glad you enjoyed it

Congratulations Canary - well done. Just pipped me at the post you b*stard

Thanks Crispy for the side game - its been very enjoyable, especially the writeups. I think your end of season tyre and strategy modifiers were good. I'd definately be on for a guest writeup next year.

Like Latic said, the important thing is to make sure it's easy for you to manage and simple enough for us to understand