Scheduling for an 8 lane track using GPRM

[Buckeye]

Does this chart only work in multiples of 8 cars when running 8 lanes?

[Stan Pope]

Does this chart only work in multiples of 8 cars when running 8 lanes?

No, it is good for arbitrary number of cars. The numCars/numLanes reference was an approximation.

[Stan Pope]

Stan, the phase shift ordering superiority makes me think that maybe we should change the way we look for PPN generators, e.g., perhaps all generator values should be some minimum value based on numCars and numLanes, when possible. This can help keep cars from re-racing too soon when there are lots of cars, for people who don't like re-ordering the charts.

Yes, starting the search using numCars/numLanes instead of 1 would usually produce better distribution during first round. After the first round, the "keep heats even" measure deteriorates because generator values get pushed farther and farther away from numCars/numLanes. Same thing happens as the number of lanes increases.

Yes!!! When numCars >> numRounds * numLanes * (numLanes - 1), this approach should almost totally eliminate the desire to resequence heats! There may still be some benefit available to resequencing, but the improvement will be small enough that most folks would decide not to use it!