Happy Saturday everyone! Monza was a fun race, especially if you pretended that Verstappen doesn’t exist :). In all seriousness, there were a lot of great battles, including Sainz and Verstappen for the first 14 laps.
See below for descriptions of our teams and players.
Monza
Our winner is Josh Masdary, who previously took a six-race break to celebrate his engagement, and came back to be P1 at Monza. He was also the first of the high scorers to submit, which gave him the fastest lap point and the victory. Congrats to Kristin and Sam for their podium finishes.
Monza Scores –>
As you can see, Cougar Autosport had 3 players in the top 10, which gave them the team victory this week, and moved them into 3rd place.Bronco SCUderia is still in the lead overall. But our team standings are getting tighter, except for my team (Aggie Motorsport) which is getting lapped every race:
Overall Team Scores –>
Minatte remains our overall leader, followed by George and Heather B. Minatte is still the only player with multiple wins, and is tied with Joe H and Sam for the most podiums with 5 (you can access all the standings here).
Current Player Leaders –>
Our Teams
No race this weekend, as you could have guessed. So I’ll take this week to tell you a little bit about our teams.
As a reminder, the lowest 2 player scores are dropped to create the team score for each race. So, if your team’s scores are 30, 25, 25, 10 and 0, your team score would be 80 (30+25+25).
So let’s learn a little bit about our teams, complete with logos drawn by my daughter Evie and grades by my son Theo. We’ll go in order of the current standings.
Bronco SCUderia
Bronco SCUderia is made up of a Santa Clara University student, astaff member, a former staff member, and two recent alumni. Our current team leaders are the most balanced team, with 3 players in the top 7, and 4 in the top 14. They are bronco red and white for the colors of SCU (which is also the same reason the 49ers chose their colors btw).
- Scott, Maggie, and Anthony are all former students of mine who love F1. Great students and big sports fans. Maggie’s a big Ferrari fan.
- Heather B now lives in Washington and earned the highest score of the season in Azerbaijan (64). She loves F1, too.
- Harold is a current SCU staff member who loves sports games of all types, and loves trash talk, so you can definitely make fun of him for being the lowest scorer on his team. I just did! He loves it.
Bronco SCUderia is bronco red and white for the colors of SCU (which is also the same reason the 49ers chose their colors btw).
Theo’s grade: A
DriveTex
Our next team stretches across the US from California to North Carolina, but all have Texas ties. They are red and blue for the flag of Texas.
- Minatte, our current overall leader and only DriveTex member in the top 16, lives in Houston now, but is a friend from church in California.
- Heather I has lived in Houston and Austin and now lives in California. She doesn’t wake up for the 6 am F1 starts, but will watch the highlights and the western hemisphere races with us.
- Kristin is a grad school friend from Austin and currently lives in North Carolina. Her son likes the cars that go vroom.
- Joe M is also a grad school friend from Austin who is now at University of North Texas, in Denton. Joe also likes the cars that go vroom.
- And Jacob is—you guessed it—a grad school friend from Austin who now is at Baylor in Waco.
Sweet logos so far, Evie!
Theo’s grade: A-minus
Cougar Autosport
Our Los Gatos team is some people who live in my house, plus three Los Gatos friends with sports ties. The team is orange and black for Los Gatos High School.
- Theo and Evie are my kids. Theo loves F1, and we watch every race live together, even the random middle-of-the-night starts. Evie couldn’t care less but fills this out anyway. Thanks Evie.
- Lucia is a friend in Los Gatos who loves F1, and I have coached two of her kids in baseball. Great family!
- Grant and Sam are friends and awesome people with whom I’ve coached little league baseball. Grant loves games, so he was excited about this. Sam is a late add who took over from another LG resident, and is now our 2nd-highest scorer since he joined in Week 4! He pretended he knew nothing about this, and now he’s amazing at it.
Theo’s grade: B
East Bay Racing
One of our three Bay Area teams, featuring five players who I know from church with ties to the East Bay.
- Joe Hanna (Danville/San Ramon, currently in 4th) and Zack (Orinda/San Jose) are two close friends of mine who have gotten into F1 over the last couple years. It’s been fun to watch them enjoy the sport.
- Rafik (Walnut Creek/SoCal) is a huge F1 fan. A big Danny Ric fanoriginally from Miami, he might have cried actual tears when he looked at the prices of the Miami GP tickets.
- Anthony (Danville/SoCal) named his 2022 F1 Fantasy Team “Sebastian Vettel Fan Club” and didn’t even pick up Vettel. Where’s the loyalty, Anthony?
- Kero (Lafayette/SF) loves F1, and if you look through his twitter account, you’ll see a lot of funny F1 memes. I was entertained.
Theo’s grade: B
Formula San Jose
Formula San Jose: five players who grew up in the San Jose area. They are blue and yellow for the San Jose flag.
- George (San Jose) is a big Red Bull fan and is currently in 2nd place. He fell in love with F1 because of the attention to aerodynamics. He’s also “lift”ing his team right now (that was maybe an aerodynamics joke) as the rest of his teammates are currently using downforce in the standings.
- Ramy (San Jose/DC) is a childhood friend who enjoys all things international, including F1.
- Chris (Sunnyvale/SoCal) is a friend from elementary school with 4 podiums this year–that’s tied for 4th most this season!
- Josh (San Jose) is a friend from church who took a long break and is back now with P1s only.
- Jeremiah (Campbell/SoCal) is also a friend from church, and Josh’s cousin, and is boom or bust in the scoring–not a bad strategy for those of us chasing the leaders!
Theo’s grade: B-minus
Last and also least…
Aggie Motorsport
Our UC Davis-themed team has a great logo and a floundering team chat. We all went to Davis at the same time but apparently didn’t learn anything about betting, predictions, or cars. Too much time in viticulture classes.
- Stacy (’03) is a good friend and our current team leader, and she has been watching F1 since March. Actually, this game is what got her into F1! Glad to have you onboard, Stacy. I enjoyed watching the Monza race at your house.
- I’m Andrew (’04), I love F1 but you wouldn’t know it from my score.
- Kevin (’03) is my dentist, my friend from high school, and Stacy’s floormate from Davis. I think his son loves F1…I am noticing a trend for those of us with kids.
- Dan and Brian (’04) are good friends from Davis who do not care about F1. Last week Brian asked “who the f*** is Verstappen” in the group chat so that’s how it’s going over here. We are planning to watch the Singapore race on Sunday together, though, because we’ll be together and I’m insisting on it.
Theo’s grade: D
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So those are our 6 teams! But we also have two new entries this week: my friend Paul Kohli and his son Ryan, who watch the races together (see, it is a trend!). They are joining us as independents for the last 8 races of the season, including Monza last week and Singapore this coming week.
On that note, I’ll be sending out the form for Singapore on Wednesday morning. Look for it then!
Thanks for playing, hope you all are having fun.
-Andrew