When the Fantasy League season opens on Sunday, 95% of the cars will receive a default rating of 1200. Why 1200? I don’t exactly know. What I do know is that the Elo rating system being used needs 1200 for all the math to work. All you need to know is that 1200 is the baseline, the average for all cars. So what kind of strategy can you take when all the cars are 1200?
A level playing field…almost
A 1200 car or a 1300 car?
All cars except for the FTE models and a few Great Race cars will start with a 1200 rating. Even if I know (and you know) that a car is faster than another, until it is proven on the track, the car will maintain a 1200 rating. And that rating will not go up until it beats another car in a race…and that’s your strategy.
The first few weeks of the season will be a gold mine of points because most of the cars will be unproven. This means you can choose a 1200 car, race it, win and earn points, then trade it in for another 1200 car you think (or know) is speedy and boost it up. Keep in mind you get the more bonus points when a car defeats a car of a higher/similar rating. When a 1200 car faces a 1200 car, the winner will get 160 bonus points plus the 500 just for winning. The rating for the winning car will go up to 1216.
That winning car with the 1216 rating may then easily be beat by a 1200 car that was previously unused. If you know which cars to pick, which you can research here in the blog, you can let one car gain a few rating points, then slide a 1200 car in, beat them, and earn some major bonus points…upwards of 200 or more if the right match-up happens. Then keep that car in your garage and you’ll march you way up the ranking ladder, earning nice bonus points along the way.
Be the underdog
Your first instinct might be to pick the car you know is the best of the bunch and just hang on to it, but you get less points if your high ranked car beats a low ranked car. If you want to maximize your bonus points per race, you need to make sure you don’t become too dominant too soon. Of course, you still want to try and win every race too!
You should also keep in mind that since match-ups are created based on rating, there is a very small window at which you can exploit this strategy. Starting a new game like the Fantasy League with little to no pre-existing stats can make things somewhat confusing at first, but it also opens up a gold rush for all players. Right now we’re all rookies.
