A different race format?

[Doug-in-the-woods]

We just held our local race on Friday nite using a different race format.
Have 2 lane track with 2 independent timers. Each timer has its own triggering switch (car one can leave first and car 2 can leave X time later and both cars can have the same E.T.)
NOTE the starting gate is electric and if desired each driver can control when his car is released (have option of both lanes together or seperate)
we had index cards which had the racers name, rank, pack #.
As the cars race the times are recorded, lanes switched and race again and recorded.
After several heats the times are adveraged per racer then the winner of each division is determined.
Can have as many heats as desired. If say you want 4 heats per car (8x down the track) then that driver can run anyone in any order until he has 4 heats.
have 2 time keepers then switch cards after each run. have the drivers hold on to their cards until they get 4 heats completed.
Makes race go very quick and eliminates any lane varience.
our track is 4
starting gate is 5'6" off the ground at a 35 degree angle. 10ft to the flats.5ft long, best time was 2.99 best adverage was 3.14
Racing went very quick. No need to bracket the cars etc.

[doct1010]

How is the schedule determined? Does the boy decide I want to race Johnny but not Bob or Bill?

[Stan Pope]

Quite curious! The total reliance on the electronics to perform correctly without even comparative times for separate cars to validate the times! I got to see the folly of that yesterday ... in real living color!

[Doug-in-the-woods]

Totally rely on the electronics = yes but any computerized system does the same
Who races who = dosn't matter. winner in each division is determined by fastest et.
remember the start gates are independent of each other when the timer is triggered so a slow start gate does not have anything to do with the et.
format worked real well.
placed all the times in an excel sheet and bingo you have average et, fastest et etc. per division.
we had cars that got to finish line first but had slower times. each heat had 2 cars race each other 2x but different lane each race so a slow lane is canceled out by average et.
may not be perfect but it sure worked well.
boys could challenge anybody but once the boy has 4 heats he is done racing.
we ran a total of 6 heats per car. 18 cars x 6 heats = 108 seperate races.
done in just under 3 hours (needed another time recorder, had one person reading the times then relaying to second who was writing down the times.Next year have 2 time readers/recorders. no relaying info.just pass the cards to other reader/recorder.

[Stan Pope]

Totally rely on the electronics = yes but any computerized system does the same
Who races who = dosn't matter. winner in each division is determined by fastest et.

These observations are not totally true!

When each racer runs a wide variety of opponents, then the win-loss ranking should correlate strongly with the time ranking. This is the parents primary source of confidence in what the race organizer is doing.

When two or more racers run a heat and are given times, finish line judges should be able to identify which racer should have the lowest time and, based on the separation at the finish line, what the approximate difference should be. When those measures don't match up, they need to open up the cover on the exectronics, cuz some bugs need to be let out!