How to run a round-robin using 2 four-lane tracks?

Debates and discussions on the various race scheduling methods that can be used and their fairness and accuracy in determining the winners.
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MERuhl
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How to run a round-robin using 2 four-lane tracks?

Post by MERuhl »

We have 2 four-lane tracks. We'd like to get away from the double-elimination schedules that we've run in the past, and go to a round-robin schedule. Our goal is for each car to run the same number of races, to maintain everyone's interest.

Today I was playing around with the race schedule generator on Stan's website, but had a hard time making it work across 2 tracks. I was hoping that I could generate a 2-round, 4-lane schedule, then manually "cut it in half", running each half of the schedule concurrently on the 2 tracks. I knew I might have to rearrange some heats to avoid the same car being scheduled on both tracks at the same time.

In addition to all cars running the same number of races, I also wanted each car to race once on each lane. This is proving to be the hard (if not impossible) part.

Does anyone know of a methodology for setting up a round-robin schedule using 2 four-lane tracks, that has each car race once on each lane across both tracks, and still racing against the maximum number of opponents?

Thanks!
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Stan Pope
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Re: How to run a round-robin using 2 four-lane tracks?

Post by Stan Pope »

The heats from round 1 and round 2 are easy to distinguish. The difference between car numbers in lanes 1 and 2 is the same for all round 1 heats and the differences are the same for all round 2 heats, but different for round 1 and round 2 heats.

If round 1 heats are run on track A and round 2 heats are run on track B, then you will satisfy the need for racing exactly once in each lane of each track.

Sorting mixes round 1 and round 2 heats, unfortunately. We have no option to, for instance, alternate round 1 and round 2 heats (yet). Very unlikely by Nov racing, too.
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MERuhl
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Re: How to run a round-robin using 2 four-lane tracks?

Post by MERuhl »

A thousand thanks to Stan! It turned out to be much simpler than I anticipated to break out a 2-round, 4-lane round-robin across two tracks, with every car racing once in each of the 8 lanes.

Thank you, Stan! You da man!
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