Talked at roundtable last night...

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Sylvar
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Talked at roundtable last night...

Post by Sylvar »

Gave a BIG plug for the district Derby and talked about how to plan and run a Derby. There were a couple of questions/observations that came up that I wanted to share with the group.

1) One pack had a couple of boys whose car lost every race. They were running Sterns with 12 runs per car (Small pack). After about 6 runs those boys didn't want to race any more. It was too embarassing for them. What do you do/ How can this be avoided?

My first answer to them was workshops. Make sure the cars are at least rolling before race day. Also mentioned Stan's 5E method. Even though I don't completely understand how to run it, I know enough about it to see that it gives a boy a chance to at least seem competetive since it matches like records.

2) 2 lane track...what is the best method to run?

This one came up in private. They were looking for an alternative to DE, but felt like all the other methods took too long on 2 lanes. We talked about a couple possibilities, but I am really interested in what you guys think about this one.

Shane



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Stan Pope
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Re: Talked at roundtable last night...

Post by Stan Pope »

Outstanding!

5e gives everyone a chance to get at least 5 contested runs. For the boys that you mentioned, that might be enough.

N-elim's can run on 2 or 3 (or even more) lane tracks. "Elimination tic marks" can be accumulated according ot "didn't win" or "didn't finish at least 2nd", etc.

2 lanes supports PPN, Stearns, Single and Double Round Robins (RR), N-Elim. Pick according to time available and number of racers to service.

RR okay for den-sized groups but too long for most pack-size groups.

N-Elim okay for pack-sized groups, but when N is 4 or more, it doesn't do well for small groups. Think about it in terms of how many rounds it takes to reduce the unbeaten group to one member:
Rounds -- Group Size
2 4
3 8
4 16
5 32
6 64
This is important since once a group reaches a single member, he has no contested runs until the finals.

I like PPN for den size groups, but run it on wider (3 or 4 lane) track. Not so nice for 2 lanes.

Stearns and PPN are managable over the same group sizes. I prefer PPN because its "worst case" chart has consistently better quality than Stearn's worst case. Also, I have great respect for the PPN co-author! :)
Stan
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Cory
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Re: Talked at roundtable last night...

Post by Cory »

Sylvar wrote:One pack had a couple of boys whose car lost every race. They were running Sterns with 12 runs per car (Small pack). After about 6 runs those boys didn't want to race any more. It was too embarassing for them. What do you do/ How can this be avoided?
I had this problem at the very first Derby I ran. (This was just before the CPN collaboration with Stan, and a year or two before the PPN collaboration, so I was using some, uh....well, charts you've probably never seen before.) At that Derby, we also had boys who lost 12 consecutive races, and it was not fun to watch.

Our solution is to run 6 races per car if we have a 3-lane track, or to run 4 or 8 races per car with a 4-lane track. This works well in our large Pack, because racing is at the Den level, and the really fast cars get to move onto the Rank finals.

I think it could work well in small Pack with everyone racing together, for example, by using a "PPN elimination round, followed CPN finals" method.
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Re: Talked at roundtable last night...

Post by davekelly »

We run a total time format at our Pack and districts (our Pack ran the districts this year). The computer program takes the time of each racer in the first heat and then lines them up for the second heat according to time. Thus the three fastest cars from the first heat will run head to head (the program also takes care of lane assignments so that each car races on a different lane, if the top three ran on the same lane previously, the program will bring up another car) the next three fastest cars will run head to head etc etc. In the third heat, the three cars with the fastest combined times will run head to head and so on and so on. With this format each race after the first heat becomes closer and closer as the program will match up cars better and better. Both at the Pack and the District there were very very few boys who lost each heat, and even those that did were in neck to neck races on the last heat. It was way cool watching some of the boys with very (and I mean very) slow cars getting excited because they won a heat or only lost by a fraction of a car length. I think the fans enjoyed it too because each race was competitive - way more fun to watch. By the third heat each and every race was accompanied by cheering which of course pumped up the boys.

Because the question has been brought up before, we are very very careful to explain the system at the beginning of the race and at the break between each heat. We carefully explain that even if a car wins all of its heats it is not necessarily the fastest car there. We have yet to see any problems with that - the boys and the parents all seem to understand the concept.
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