With the brand spanking new season almost upon us, we are ready to launch the Pole Poll championship for 2009. We are delighted to welcome a number of new faces to the competition.

What do you have to do if you want to take part?

For each race, before qualifying starts you have to predict who will be on pole and also the top 8 finishers in the race.

You get 2 points if you get the pole sitter correct. You get 4 points for getting the winner right and you get 2 points for each of the other places you get correct.

Also, if you have a ‘near miss’ eg. the person who you predicted to win comes second, or fifth comes fourth, you get 1 point.

But there is one extra factor.

Before qualifying starts in Australia this weekend you need to also predict the top eight finishers in the whole season and who will have the most polls. This works in the same way as though the season was a race except you get double points, rather like ‘playing your joker’. As these points are added at the end of the season, this can become the crucial swing factor in the year (in fact, the last two years Nick has been winning until these points were added).

Finally, we are adding a element to the competition this year. We want you to pick a MAIDEN winner (i.e. someone who has never won a F1 race before). If the driver you choose wins a race at any time during this season, you will get a 4 point bonus applied immediately to your score. You can of course say “nobody” if you expect that there will be no maiden winners; in this case, you would get the points at the end of the season, if that proves to be the case.

And that’s it!

I’ll open a thread for your season predictions shortly. Use this thread for any questions you have about the rules, scoring, etc.