Revisiting the subject of late entries on Race Day

[pack529holycross]

I know this was discussed in a different thread due to a parent getting very upset about his son's car being excluded from racing, but I wanted to ask a bit of a different question, specifically involving GPRM software and how it handles entry data. As I understand it, you enter everyone in to the system ahead of time, then "pass" drivers who pass inspection and only those "passed" drivers are configured into the race schedules that the software generates. My question is this. Lets say that you have 6 Dens. Registration is over. Racing has begun. You get to the 5th Den, for example, and a scout shows up for the 6th Den. Wouldn't you be able to simply go back into Registration Mode, "pass" that driver, re-generate the race schedule for that "group" ( Den ), without it having any effect on the racing done up to that point? In my mind, unless the software "freezes" registration once racing has begun, you would be able to add or drop drivers from "groups" that have yet to race at all.

I would say that if someone totally missed their Den's heats, and desired to race, they SHOULD be allowed to race in some type of "makeup" bracket, or possibly just race them in the next Den available, provided you are running from Tigers to WII ( this doesn't, in my mind create an unfair advantage for the boy who was late - his "penalty" would be that he didn't run with his own Den and now has to run against older boys ). A makeup bracket only seems to work if you have enough cars to run in it. Perhaps anyone who "brokedown" or "crashed" during a run, preventing that boy from seeing his car's true potential, could be added to a "make-up" bracket or a "second chance" bracket with a separate award for that tier of contestants.

I am a big advocate for "everybody wins SOMETHING", and welcome your feedback on this subject. 23 days till raceday!

Nicholas

[Stan Pope]

Great topic! Good thoughts. I'll let the expertise on GPRM handle that aspect.

I am in favor of your idea of "getting them into the competition". I am not in favor of "total forgiveness of tardiness", since it sends the wrong message.

In the case you describe, the "on time" entry cutoff is artificially early for most of the entrants ... if racing were to take an hour per age-group, the last group would start 4 hours after the first. I'd stagger the cut-off in the same manner that I stagger the start of racing.

An approach useful in some racing formats is to include a group of "dummy entries" that are included in the race schedule. As late comers complete their inspection, they are assigned to the most beneficial dummy entry (i.e. the dummy entry that has its first heat latest in the schedule. Missed heats are scored as "did not finish".

The same method might be used for cars that could not get through inspection in the time allotted ...

[texasprd]

Our pack uses GPRM, and I have done the pre-race software/data setup and race-day direction ever since we bought it. I can't recall for certain if we've run into this situation (I think we may have - just not certain), but I don't see why you couldn't add the boy to his group/den as long as racing hasn't begun for that group. We wait until a group is ready to run before generating their schedule, so you should be able to add a boy to a "waiting" group and then gen or re-gen their schedule. If you have access to the computer at home, simulate the situation and then you'll know for certain.

An alternative, along Stan's line of "not total forgiveness", is to require late arrivals to run in the "fun"/parent/sibling group if you have one. He still gets to run, but suffers some consequence by not being able to run with his den mates and not for the awards his den mates are running for.

[gpraceman]

If a racer was added to the roster (new add or was changed to being "Passed") after the schedule was created but before racing has started, then you can just regenerate the schedule.

If a racer is added to the roster after racing has started, then restarting racing is not advisable, since it really isn't fair to everyone else. Assuming you are using times scoring, you can use the Manual Heats button on the racing screen to append a set of heats to the end of the schedule for that racer. That car will race all by itself in each of the lanes (unless you have other latecomers) but you will at least be able to collect times for that car and have them factored into the standings. This doesn't work if you use points scoring, since finish order matters.

You cannot put the racer into another race group, since their times will not show up in the group they really should belong to.

[Cloud 9]

For those racers that don't show or miss their heat, would you uncheck them for that group and create a schedule without them, or run a block car on that lane in their place? It seems that if you ran a block car in their place, then those results would affect the standings if you chose to race the no-show in a later add-on heat at the end.
Thanks,
Jeff Cloud

[gpraceman]

For those racers that don't show or miss their heat, would you uncheck them for that group and create a schedule without them, or run a block car on that lane in their place? It seems that if you ran a block car in their place, then those results would affect the standings if you chose to race the no-show in a later add-on heat at the end.

You will not be able to unpass them after racing has started for their race group. You can run with a really slow car in that lane or leave the lane empty.