Mr. Slick, Master Pine Head said,
Here is an analysis and scheme that I worked out a couple years ago:If you have individual racers stage their cars plan on up to a minute per car per heat. This will allow the last person to stage their car to get around to be able to watch the race too!
Someday we might be able to figure out how to have a lot of races quickly without reducing the amount of racer involvement. . . . still looking for ideas on how to do this.
The primary limiting factor in race cycle time is the time spent staging the cars, running the heat, identifying the winners/scoring the heat, and removing the cars from the finish line. In fact, depending on how quickly the electronics allows the start gate to be closed, some or all of the last three steps can be overlapped with the staging of the next heat.
Timed and points racing racing schemes depend for accuracy on the cars running on the same track for every heat. Lane equity is a key to their accuracy and fairness.
Elimination racing with lane draw apportions lane inequity in a random (therefore, fair) manner and over a number of heats will average out small enough to have a small effect on accuracy. (This was born out in simulations of the several methods using stats for district-quality cars provided by folks here on DT and Cory Young's simulation software.) In other words, a single queue of racers can be served by multiple tracks without damaging either fairness or accuracy!
What kind of elimination race fits? 5+ loss no-chart elim on three lane tracks does the job. Three tracks will just about keep up with the pace that the lane draw can run. If you think your boys will be more meticulous in staging, then add a track or two! One team of officials manage the boys: Line 'em up and draw for heat and lane. (This sounds complicated, but is actually done rather easily with the heat participants being selected by lot from the next 5 racers in line.) The heat participants race on the next available track!
For 150 cars in a single class, 5 losss to elimination running mostly 3 at a time requires 408 contested heats with racers averaging 7.5 heats apiece. A small number, 19 exit after 5 heats with no heat wins at all. The rest get at least 6 heats and at least one heat win!
I target heat cycle times of 36 seconds (three lanes boys staging) but average of 60 seconds is more typical, i.e. each track runs 60 heats per hour. Spread across 4 tracks (240 heats per hour) the time to run 150 scout quintuple eliminations to completion is 1.7 hours.
(EDIT: I should not do detail work like this after 9 p.m. ... Not 1123 contested heats! 408! I pulled "contested heat" numbers out of the "contested run" column! It looked funny at the time, but couldn't see why. GIGO!
Toss in your own estimates for cycle time to scale the time to run.)
Still, when there are 100 or so boys in a group, many of us have difficulty identifying individuals. There are subtle ways to handle it without calling undue attention to the boy or his disability. Might even issue him a "I get to stage first" pass to show when he races again. (Turns a negative into a positive.) But don't tell everyone why ... everyone would want one and no cars would be safe!
