How do you choose your pickems?

[Mark]

Bezza posting about getting his championship back got me thinking.

How do you choose your F1 pickems? Just random thoughts on who you'd like to see do well, or who you think might do well?

From years of watching pickems competitions here it seems that the same names consistently do well year after year, so they must have some sort of sensible selection system, e.g. picking the winner is important as it gets you a good haul of points, but quite often lots of people pick the winner, it's getting those in the lower placings right that's going to mean you're high up the order race after race.

[SkyTom]

What an interesting thread! For me, I do a lot of research before each race to see if any teams have new upgrades coming or if anyone has any penalties, at the start of the season I look at all the pre-season test results, and try and gauge them for myself.

I also consider which tracks suit which drivers, for example I have never not picked Kimi to win Spa - and when he did win in 2009 with Fisichella in the Force India 2nd, I believe that pick was what won me my second championship.

Regarding the picking process, I try and do two more things - not just pick a Noah's Ark type finish, as this rarely happens, and is too standard to get high results (like picking 123456 in the lotto, if this ever won you would hardly win anything). The other thing I do is consider what happens if each of my picks are one place out of position - for example, last year I would nearly always put Alonso in 2nd place, so that if the Red Bull 1-2s ever failed, I would gain more points than putting him 3rd even though that is where I believed he would finish. The final thing I do is not put the big names too far back - either put them at the front, or miss some out, and put some lower teams for 7th or 8th. When these do surprise, they can boost your result above the others too, which I guess is the key - trying to be more unique than the competition!

[inimitablestoo]

I tend to pick names I think are going to do well, but don't put a lot of thought into it - you could definitely over-think things. In contrast to SkyTom's approach, I tend to fill the eight places with big names, so that I'll (probably) at least pick up points for them finishing in the top eight, even if I don't get the positions right. Not sure this approach works quite as well as it used to (I was second in the 2003 PickEms under the old system) but I haven't done too badly lately.

The one thing I also never do is change my mind once I've submitted my eight - unless there's a driver change affecting one of the names I've chosen. Much like changing your lottery numbers and watching the old ones come up, you can bet the original result would occur rather than the one you've picked to replace it...

[Bezza]

What an interesting thread! For me, I do a lot of research before each race to see if any teams have new upgrades coming or if anyone has any penalties, at the start of the season I look at all the pre-season test results, and try and gauge them for myself.

I also consider which tracks suit which drivers, for example I have never not picked Kimi to win Spa - and when he did win in 2009 with Fisichella in the Force India 2nd, I believe that pick was what won me my second championship.

Regarding the picking process, I try and do two more things - not just pick a Noah's Ark type finish, as this rarely happens, and is too standard to get high results (like picking 123456 in the lotto, if this ever won you would hardly win anything). The other thing I do is consider what happens if each of my picks are one place out of position - for example, last year I would nearly always put Alonso in 2nd place, so that if the Red Bull 1-2s ever failed, I would gain more points than putting him 3rd even though that is where I believed he would finish. The final thing I do is not put the big names too far back - either put them at the front, or miss some out, and put some lower teams for 7th or 8th. When these do surprise, they can boost your result above the others too, which I guess is the key - trying to be more unique than the competition!

Giving away your secrets there SkyTom!!!

I don't really have a planned out strategy. It literally takes me a minute to do my pickems and no longer.

I have a very in-depth and rather statistical knowledge of F1 though, and this must help me, as with what SkyTom says - drivers who do well at certain tracks comes to mind, other tracks which tend to produce freakish results (like Melbourne or Montreal), others which are bore-fests (Hungary, Barcelona) tend have low attrition and lots of big name drivers exactly where you would expect.

I tend to do well and be in the top 10 most years with 2008 obviously being my best year! Last year did well but didn't actually manage a win all year.

Just a case of being consistent, entering every round and picking realistically. Have to let personal preferences out of the window for them!

[Kevincal]

Let's be honest here, sure maybe some of the same names place in the top 20 or so, but in general there is a ton of luck involved... It's gambling basically. But it is true that the more time and effort you put into researching things, will give you that slight edge that means the difference between being 20-50th or in the top 20. I still say it's atleast 75% luck though who wins and does well. (top 10)

[woody2goody]

I pretty much do what Bezza does, but I tend to pick drivers who I like over ones I don't, simply because I want them to do better!

I have a harder time of it with the NASCAR ones, but I think everyone does.

[pettersolberg29]

I pretty much do what Bezza does, but I tend to pick drivers who I like over ones I don't, simply because I want them to do better!

I never pick favourite drivers in my pickems as I don't want to jinx them!

[Bezza]

Let's be honest here, sure maybe some of the same names place in the top 20 or so, but in general there is a ton of luck involved... It's gambling basically. But it is true that the more time and effort you put into researching things, will give you that slight edge that means the difference between being 20-50th or in the top 20. I still say it's atleast 75% luck though who wins and does well. (top 10)

Yeah in the same way as you would do a football accumulator. You are not going to bet on Man Utd, Arsenal and Chelsea all losing if you knew about football. The same applies here as we all know our F1

[Sleeper]

Dart board.