I am in the middle of explaining that right now. One of our Tiger Scouts was telling everyone at his school that he was "cheated" as he won all his races but didn't win the Pack derby. At our race, 3 different people explained that the Scouts race against the timer, not each other but since they are new to the Pack maybe they just didn't get it. So I supplied a complete set of statistics to the Cubmaster and committee chair (which is one reason why I love GPMR).lyonsperf wrote: Its just a little frustrating to explain to a nine year old why he didn't win when his car was first every heat. Its even worse when he is so smart to remember his times from the pack race and wants to know "what I did" to make the car slow down.
Echoing Stan's point of the differences in track setup, we ran two weekends in a row, first at Pack, then at District. My younger son did 2nd at Pack, but his standard deviation was a bit high compared to the last 2 years/cars. I didn't think we were that far off when we were testing alignment! He won Districts this past weekend, going up against some very tough competition including the Scout that won our Pack. When it was all over, his standard deviation was nearly half what it was the previous week. The only thing that can explain it for me was that the people who put together the track at Pack never set it up before (32' Freedom aluminum) while the people who set up at Districts have been doing it since we got the track. When I went over lane statistics, lane 3 was definitely slower than the other 2 lanes at our Pack race. I do remember my son's car "clicking" at one particular joint at Pack in lane 3. It was more aggressively weighted compared to previous years, so the only conclusion I can come to was that it was hitting that joint and slowing down by about .03 seconds, a huge difference when we had a few races decided by .001-.002.
I wish we were allowed to RR, Pack and District are strictly 4 on the floor. We finally broke 2.6 on the track, I would have loved to run in the 2.4's but no matter what we have done with alignment, a high 2.5 was our best run ever. The track record from Districts last year from a Scout in another Pack was also in the high 2.5's.
Best regards,
Griff
