Time or points and drop a heat?

[rdeis]

We ran 6 rounds for time this year, each car ran each lane on a 6 lane track. I don't know the scheduling method used but it comes out of a commercial race management program. Winner was best average time.

My question is this: Is there value allowing racers to drop the worst of their 6 runs in either a point-based or time-based system?

Our derby had some issues (aside from my and my son's crashes) that dropping a run might have smoothed over, but I don't know what sorts of trouble doing that could cause?

[Stan Pope]

Part of your question must be answered by your own organization as it identifies which attributes of a car's performance are valued most. Do they value consistency? Or, best performance? This part is really an "opinion" issue, I think.

Other aspects of the question, though, need to include evaluation of the track's condition and the consistency of the timing system. If a track has some bad spots along the rail that will kick a car off the track if it happens to touch the rail at that point, then the scoring system needs to accomodate such random events. If the timing system is not consistent, then the use of timed competition is problemmatic, and head-to-head competition, e.g. Sextuple Elimination (which only cares about which car(s) finished first in each heat) or Points-Final-Standing (which is concerned with order of finish in each heat) is indicated.

In the end, you need to combine both pieces of information, what does the organization value and what can the track support, to reach a satisfactory conclusion.

[Stan Pope]

Part of your question must be answered by your own organization as it identifies which attributes of a car's performance are valued most. Do they value consistency? Or, best performance? This part is really an "opinion" issue, I think.

If your pack races are used to qualify racers to a district or council race, you might also consider which attributes the district or council values most! That way, you will be sending the cars that are most likely to succeed at district or council!

[Mr. Slick]

I find that if the group is new to Pinewood style racing and the skill set of the builders is such that there are wheels coming off and cars rubbing the centre guides and large variances in times for lots of cars, I recommend that they use "single fastest time" rather then total or average time. This eliminates the scenarios where a car loses a wheel and can't get fixed.

Tonight's race was a first time race for this group. They used pinecar kits and had 3 work sessions at meetings totalling about an hour. All my two assitants, oldest daughter and son, and I could do was, pray and keep the repairs going! We had two dads helping with the repairs - mostly hubs coming off and wheels racing ahead of the cars.

The practice round discovered that they did not know about graphite except for a couple of names that I recognized from the Cub Scout district races! their cars had no problems. . . Lots of hot melt glue threads wrapped around axles between wheel and body. No one explained that the little tab on the itsy bitsy hub cap plastic pieces needed to be trimmed off or it sticks between the spokes like a "playing card clicker on a bike" and really slows down the car.

The results of "Fastest single time" grouped most every one close since the car breakdowns were of no penalty.

For awards I made sure that every one got a wall display plaque that they could decorate. They take up space in the trailer and I just HAD to encourage them for next year. Talk about a bunch of surprised kids!

This group definetly had lots of fun at the race and are excited about next time and no one felt bad about losing a couple of wheels during the races!