Hybrid Racing

[pack529holycross]

This post appeared in a different thread:

"pack529holycross wrote:
Perhaps all of the cars can be "qualified" and "seeded" based on ET's, then the cars that are truly competitively matched will be racing each other to better determine a single car's performance. I do believe that using ET's for qualifying is fully reasonable ( not withstanding the time invoved in doing the xtra layer of racing ) as well as appropriately consistent with how ALL racing is organized - brackets or starting order is based on qualifying runs.


Pack529,

What you describe is similar to the regional race I described in an earlier post. Due to too many racers and too little time for a full race, the organizers ran each car down a two-lane track, once in each lane, and used the cumulative times from those two runs to rank the cars. Then the top cars (I don't remember the exact number, somewhere between 8 to 16 I think) were raced off using an elimination race.

This was basically a hybrid race using both timed scoring and elimination to determine the winners. They replaced the preliminary rounds with single car time trials to rank the cars for the final round of racing. It worked but was not very popular and hasn't been used since to my knowledge. Since most of the cars were eliminated after only 2 runs a lot of racers and parents weren't very happy. Given the time constraints the organizers were under that day however, it worked for them in that situation."

I wonder if combining the two dominant scoring methods would produce more satisfying results for those scouts who's cars are more participants than competitors.... AS I think about speed-matching entries within the qualifying process, especially for a District event, I believe that taking the top 12 cars (ET) in a single group would make the races (theoretically) more competitive and therefore lessening the "he raced against slower cars so did he really win?" syndrome that seems to be the most often discussed "disadvantage" of points / finishing order method.

Following the thought, I wounder if GPRM has the ability to take a group of say, 100 cars or so, time them for ET, then sort those cars into race groups based on a predetermined number of cars per race group - lets say 10 groups of 10 cars each. It would then rank the entire group by ET's, split the group 10 at a time, then resort the groups and generate teh race schedules for points/PPN racing structure....

... things that make you go HMMMM. Has this type of "hybrid" system been tried by anyone else, or are we witnessing the possiblity of a "new" system being attempted? The nice thing about GPRM is that you could still use subgroups for the scout's level ( Tigers, Cubs, WEBELOS ) to award 1st 2nd 3rd in each subgroup.

Nicholas

[gpraceman]

Following the thought, I wounder if GPRM has the ability to take a group of say, 100 cars or so, time them for ET, then sort those cars into race groups based on a predetermined number of cars per race group - lets say 10 groups of 10 cars each. It would then rank the entire group by ET's, split the group 10 at a time, then resort the groups and generate teh race schedules for points/PPN racing structure....

Not currently. GPRM is pretty flexible, but the focus is to the larger audience. That is a pretty specialized way to do things and one that I don't think so many people would want to do.

[pack529holycross]

Lets go to the next level - have the contestants enter their information online, take the database and enbed the info into RFID tags. The tags will go on every car, then you just run each car down the track in "RFID" mode, and the system picks up the info, tracks the performance, determines race groups, and then prints out the race schedule for staging the cars based on performance. GPS could also track car position and simluate the "replay" of the race to analyze performance of each car down the track.

Back to The Future - 8.21 Gigawattts.....

Nicholas

[Stan Pope]

Some products use "adaptive scheduling" concept. And, of course, it is the basis for elimination racing.

"SUPER TIMER 2" (http://www.supertimer.com/pinewoodII/rmrace.html) uses time to help match the best against the best. Each racer runs the full schedule of heats ... no elimination. Final ranking is based on time. Won-Lost records with this algorithm are potentially misleading and cause some parents concern. The first round of racing seems to do what is being proposed.

"RaceView" incorporates finish place into an elimination computation. I think that it is not really close to the proposed scheme.

"Multiple elimination" uses heat finish records to perform a ranking and quickly perculate fastest cars into groups which race each other, but the grouping is slower to happen, and times are not involved.


(Edited to correct software name and add reference.)