The trophy round

Debates and discussions on the various race scheduling methods that can be used and their fairness and accuracy in determining the winners.
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timtrain35
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The trophy round

Post by timtrain35 »

I've seen numerous threads about running a points style race with PPN charts. The consensus is that this is a good way to narrow the field to about 7 cars for a trophy round. My question is, how do you all handle the trophy round? Do you re-number the cars and generate another chart or is it more of an elimination round? Would like to know what you all do, thanks!
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Re: The trophy round

Post by rpcarpe »

If you use race management software, you can skip that whole rigamarole. Best avg times etc... are all tabulated for you. Very easy, and transparent to the racers.
With PPN charts, you'll get to the top cars, then most people run a double elimination. Not a perfect system, but you'll be correct most of the time.
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gpraceman
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Re: The trophy round

Post by gpraceman »

rpcarpe wrote:With PPN charts, you'll get to the top cars, then most people run a double elimination.
From my experience, that is not the case for the trophy round. Double elimination has several disadvantages, making fairness suspect. That is why I do not support it with my software.
timtrain35 wrote:My question is, how do you all handle the trophy round?

With 7 racers and depending on how many lane track you have, you can run a Perfect-N chart or even a Complimentary Perfect-N chart. No elimination round needed. PN and CPN charts are the best to run in a trophy round. Stan has a matrix at http://stanpope.net/grdir.html that will show you the combinations of racers and number of lanes that will yield these type of charts.
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timtrain35
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Re: The trophy round

Post by timtrain35 »

Thanks for the replies thus far, here's some more info. This is an Awana race with a 2 lane borrowed home made track, no timer. The commander is probably going to want to split the group into 2 age groups (Sparks and TNT's) with somewhere around 20 cars in each group, give or take 5. He also probably has lots of trophies, 1 2 and 3 for speed and design for each age group.

I've checked out Stan's and Corey's sites for chart generation and point tallying. The only way I can see to run the trophy round with 5-7 racers and to continue in the PPN format is to re-number those cars and essentially treat it as a new race with it's own chart. Is this how it's usually done or am I missing something?

I'm also thinking about 4 runs for each car, but I'm worried there might be a bunch of ties. Any thoughts on that will be appreciated as well, thanks again.
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gpraceman
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Re: The trophy round

Post by gpraceman »

timtrain35 wrote:I've checked out Stan's and Corey's sites for chart generation and point tallying. The only way I can see to run the trophy round with 5-7 racers and to continue in the PPN format is to re-number those cars and essentially treat it as a new race with it's own chart.
You can do it that way. Personally, I would not renumber the cars, I would renumber the chart to match the car numbers in the last round, but you can do it either way that works for you.
timtrain35 wrote:I'm also thinking about 4 runs for each car, but I'm worried there might be a bunch of ties. Any thoughts on that will be appreciated as well, thanks again.
More racing = less ties. Also, the smaller the group, the less chance for ties, as racers are more likely to race head to head with other racers in that round.
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Re: The trophy round

Post by gpraceman »

Also, with only a two lane track, I would recommend that, at least in the first round of racing, you give everyone at least two runs down each lane of the track. Four total runs. Only two runs down is really no better than double elim.

Again, more racing = less ties, so you would have less of a chance of ties when trying to advance the top racers to the trophy round. If you still end up with ties for those top spots, I would just advance the extra racer(s). IMO, don't worry about ties unless trophies are at stake.
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Stan Pope
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Re: The trophy round

Post by Stan Pope »

timtrain35 wrote:Do you re-number the cars and generate another chart or is it more of an elimination round?
The association between Chart numbers and racers should always be random. The reason is to avoid any possibility or appearance of possibility for manipulation by anyone. In my work with small groups (8 to 30 racers), this means that at the beginning of racing a particular chart, the racers drew their chart numbers blind. (I actually used small placards that the entrants could wear.) Two separate charts required two separate draws.

This worked okay since the car owners were the "drivers". They handled their own cars for all aspects of racing. If the car owners are spectators during racing (someone else "drives" their cars), then a different method for assignment of racer to chart number. Race management software can "hide" the chart numbers and only show the names that are assigned to the chart numbers. Hopefully, they do so through some randomizing algorithm or they allow the user to manage an external randomizing process and specify the relationship.
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timtrain35
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Re: The trophy round

Post by timtrain35 »

Thanks again guys. Stan, I had not thought of assigning numbers in that manner, definitely worth considering. Once I speak with the commander (troop leader in Awana lingo), I'll let you know how the event goes, assuming I don't have anymore questions, which I probably will. :?
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Re: The trophy round

Post by timtrain35 »

OK, update time! The big night was last night and it went a lot better than last year's event. I downloaded the spreadsheet on Cory's website and it worked very well. We had 2 age groups running separately, Sparks and T&T's. Sparks had 14 cars total with 5 making it to the trophy round. T&T's had 9 cars total with 5 going to the trophy round. We were going to only advance 4 cars for T&T's, but the software wanted to add another car. To make life easy, we just advanced another racer.

Both the prelim's and trophy rounds had 2 rounds each (each car down the 2 lane track twice, I think I have that right). Ties did occur in the prelim's but not in the trophy rounds, at least for 1 2 3 placement. My daughter came in 2nd this year and that didn't surprise me. Her car just didn't go together well and I ran out of time to fix it right. We got the whole thing done in about 90 minutes including awards, which was right on schedule.

On a side note, some of the rules were actually enforced this year. We turned away about a dozen or so cars that were overweight and gave them the opportunity to fix them before the race started. There were still some BSA wheels in the bunch, but at least we're making progress. Next year will be better.

Once again guys, thanks for all the advice. I can't tell you all what a great resource this forum has become. I'm still riding the buzz from last night and am considering diving into the deep end and sending off a car to WIRL, but that's another thread. Thanks again.
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