Looking Forward -- Iowa

Hello Again, Internet! Feels like we were just together reviewing the Milwaukee Indyfest. That's because we were. (See an appeal later in this post, as I try and figure out a way to turn these race recaps around faster.) But, Milwaukee is behind us! Forward! To Iowa!


Iowa 2012

Race Finish	Driver	Qualifying	Grid	Laps Led	Completed	ARS
1	Hunter-Reay	7	7	15	250	65.00
2	Andretti	3	3	3	250	50.60
3	Kanaan	9	19	0	250	68.00
4	Dixon	8	8	76	250	67.20
5	Pagenaud	19	25	0	250	76.00
6	Castroneves	2	2	133	250	58.60
7	Barrichello	15	11	1	250	50.20
8	Carpenter	22	21	0	250	63.00
9	Rahal	10	20	0	250	46.00
10	Wilson	17	13	0	249	41.96
11	Kimball	21	14	0	248	42.90
12	Sato	24	23	0	247	50.72
13	Jakes	25	18	1	245	42.86
14	de Silvestro	13	22	0	244	30.83
15	Legge	23	16	0	243	30.75
16	Tagliani	11	9	0	207	10.06
17	Hinchcliffe	4	4	19	195	0.68
18	Briscoe	5	5	2	178	-2.23
19	Newgarden	12	10	0	178	2.61
20	Conway	20	17	0	123	10.52
21	Servia	18	15	0	98	6.47
22	Hildebrand	14	12	0	95	1.16
23	Power	6	6	0	67	-3.11
24	Viso	16	24	0	67	1.86
25	Franchitti	1	1	0	0	2.00

- Obligatory Disclaimer: This is the Old Formula. The New Formula also accounts for Average Running Position.

- Kind of a Feast or Famine race last year. Very good scores from 1-13. Dismal scores from 16-25.

- I'm curious to see how Iowa plays out this year. I'm hoping to be more dialed-in with my Twitter predictions, and I'm hoping that the heat race format of qualifying (which I think is AWESOME) will give me more of a clue, since we'll have a better look at race setups.

- Can Marco Andretti catch a break? He's been quite good at both Texas and Milwaukee. He just needs a finish. Iowa has been kind to Marco in the past. Will it be in the very near future?

An Appeal

So, here today I've had to publish two posts back-to-back: my Milwaukee review and this Iowa preview. This is because of the sheer amount of time that it takes for me to calculate average running position, which is important to the New Formula. I'll be sending an appeal to our Scoring Indy Official IT Specialist later today. But, let's see if you can help me out with this issue, Internet.

Here's what I currently have to do, in order to calculate average running position. I download the Lap Chart from More Front Wing. I open up a spreadsheet with "Driver" on the Y-Axis and "Lap" on the X-Axis. Then, I manually enter the driver's running position for each lap into the sheet, and the spreadsheet calculates the average.

The problem with this is that I have to enter a lot of data. At Milwaukee there were 5,436 laps completed. That's a lot of data entry. It takes me a LONG time to do this, and I don't like publishing Race Reviews on Friday. So, this is my appeal: Internet, please tell me that there's a better way to do this. Tell me there's a place I can simply look up the Average Running Position. Tell me a better way to get my spreadsheet to do it. Please. Please, please, please.

Stay Tuned

As always, stay tuned to @ScoringIndy on Twitter for predictions once qualifying is done. Also, feel free to tweet me or DM me with answers to my appeal. I'm guessing you don't like having recaps on Friday either...

Thanks!!

-- Guido