
The background
In previous years we have had a low of 30 and high somewhere over 50 participants. This included all age groups of Cubbies though Trek (4 different age groups). All of the groups have been run together in what I believe was some form of double elimination format with awards given for both place and speed the first three places in each group. I have yet to figure out how they figured out how they were able to calculate any of this other than the speed in each class as we have an electronic timer. They have been running the race during our normal club time which is on Wednesday evenings from 6-7:30.
With the double elimination format we have always taken about 10 minutes between re-setting the brackets for round two to share a gospel message with everyone in attendance. We are going to do that again this year as we feel this is the most important portion of the event and for the majority of the parents in attendance, this the one or two times per year we have contact with them beyond seeing them when they drop of and pick their children up from club.
Our current setup is a 4 lane Besttrack with a RaceMaster IV timer.
Now for the questions
1. What would be feasible to attempt to do during this time frame? There may be a bit of flexibility on how late the race runs but I don't imagine running past 8 pm would be well received by most of the leaders or parents in attendance.
2. Would it be best to separate out the groups by ages and only run them against each other? Part of the problem with this would be that some of the groups only have a handful of participants while other have a dozen plus. One of my goals is to let each kid run as many times as possible with our time allowed. In past races, if a kids car did not win one of their first two races, they only ran twice and where done for the entire event.
3. Help me convince my wife that purchasing GPRM would help make the race run better, smoother, faster, more accurate, ect...


Any words of advice?