With the brand spanking new season almost upon us, we are ready to launch the Pole Poll championship for 2010.

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 10 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 Bahrain this weekend you need to also predict the top ten 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.

Also before the season starts 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! Except this year we have a fancy new way to enter the competition (and to make things easier for Bearded Stew).

So to enter you need to give your season predictions here: http://aaserver.co.uk/widgets/poll.cgi?race=0

And your race predictions here: http://aaserver.co.uk/widgets/poll.cgi?race=1

Good luck!