Derby Talk

We are using Derbymaster software for our race this saturday - it has an option for "stearns method". I've read alittle about it but I'mm not fully understanding what is meant by a "round" - does this mean that if I have 4 cars that each car will race the other cars once and then the ROUND is complete? If thats the case, what would be considered a fair number of rounds to schedule for a given group of racers? Opinions?

Thanks

Stearns defines a round as each racer making one heat. So divide the number of racers entered by the number of lanes and round up to see the number of heats per round.

Note that Stearns does not promise balanced lane assignments, so it would not be popular for timed racing.

Once some minimum criteria are satisfied, Stearns seems to go squirrelly in opponent and lane balance. The programmer's response to this observation was to look at the chart and if you don't like it, generate another until you get one that satisfies you. (There is some randomness in there.) I don't know how DM implements that guidance, though.