Maximum entries at a race???

[Daddu]

Last year at our "Pine-car" event we had 138 entries in 4 classes,
5oz stock, 5oz modified, 10oz modified, show.
We are planning to have a famous person/persons as guest hosts, and projections suggest it could be a monsterous event.
What is the most entries you have had in your event, be it local, district,regional., and How did you manage it?
This is our annual charity event .
Thanks

[Stan Pope]

At our district races, we routinely have 300 to 400 racing, spread across 5 age groups racing, stagger start, on 4 tracks. We run quintuple (5) elimination, racing 3 at a time ... only owner-drivers handle their cars. Expect racing to take 3 hours per group. Event at local sports complex with 4 tracks, bleacher seating, and gathering/inspection area occupying 3 side-by-side basketball courts and surrounding running track. First place finishers from age groups meet for Race of Champions, and then the adult/leaders race their open class cars. A full day!

That help?

[Daddu]

Helped a whole lot.
We have two 6 lanes plaindosi (sp) tracks.
Thank you oh great and inspiring one.

[Stan Pope]

If you want to talk about specific plans or methods, drop me an email (I prefer email to PM for convenience and record ... PM's get purged too often) Not all racing methods can push that many boys through in the time available. I've got some tools available to help you plan. One of the advantages of multiple elim / no chart is that you can easily adapt to however many are present and can accomodate late arrivals with small penalty. No more "Sorry, inspection is closed. Racing has started, so come back next year ... on time."

[PWTom]

Given the number of racers and categories, what do you think the number of racers in each category will be?? We run our Pack race where all ranks race all of the others. We have had as many as 80 cars racing in a group on our 6-lane track. We use a Stearns chart to determine the top 6 racers, then use a CPN chart for the Grand Finals. Takes about 3 hours to run all of the races, but each car runs at least 20 times down the track.

[Daddu]

The 10oz open class had approx 13 entries
The 5oz modified class had approx 55 entries
The 5oz stock class had approx 60 entries,
and the show class approx 20, some of the show cars did race.
one loss you're out. some vehicles ran one time.
But remember the race is for charity and these are "adults".

[PWTom]

But remember the race is for charity and these are "adults".

That's a completely different race! Depending on the seriousness of the competitors, single elim may be sufficient. It might be fun to use Stan's 5E no chart with adults.

[Stan Pope]

Depending on the seriousness of the competitors, single elim may be sufficient. It might be fun to use Stan's 5E no chart with adults.

Trophies 1-3 in each class suggests that SE is insufficient and that 5E is overkill.

Best solution that I've been able to offer (short of potentially long duration timed races which would put timing comparisons at risk) is to run medium sized preliminary "flights" as folks complete registration and inspection, then qualify top N to finals. I'm thinking that 3-round Stearns on 6 lanes working flights of 36 racers with 8 to 10 advancing to finals gives minimum time to complete prelims and gives high probability that the fastest 3 in the flight (and, potentially, overall) advance to finals. That gives each racer three runs, so it isn't a "one and done" outing for anyone. The 3 to 1 or 4 to 1 reduction in racers helps manage the size of the finals. PN on 6 lanes gives everyone 6 runs and doubles the time for preliminaries but can sustain greater reduction without losing accuracy, giving a smaller pool (approx 1/2 as compared to Stearns) of finalists. However, I think that the time for preliminaries is the key concern here. And the unknown number of entrants (could be 50, could be 500) argues for efficient prelims.