jrspruitt

I'm not sure any system would be or is 100% fair, not to mention, fair is a bit subjective. Like the first turn pile up, it's a bit of bad luck for everyone involved, but to me, that is to some extent part of the race. The difference between a time attack style competition, and racing other cars. There is a balance there to maintain, like lapped drivers letting the leaders by, but not smoothing it out so much, that you take that bit of luck or chance out of it.

The Reedy Invitational format sounds nice, and I imagine a good change of pace, to keep things fresh, any format would probably grow stale after a while.

As for running more lower mains, seems like it would be great when attendance allowed it, but would probably garner some complaints when people are leaving the track in the late evening on a Sunday. At least races where people have some travel time to get back home. This is probably the biggest factor, picking a format that suits the attendance numbers, the type of people showing, weekend warriors vs able to take time off work sort of thing, not to mention facilities and time of year if they have lights or its indoors. Weather, 110 degrees in the shade and it probably won't be track time people are complaining about. Perhaps competition level too, a race like the Invitational, where its all very skilled drivers, you can probably do things a bit differently, then you would with average joes. As you have people competing for sponsorship's, marketing appeal, possibly contract negotiation leverage, vs people competing for bragging rights and some weekend fun.

bigdog

iTrader: (4)

I agree!!

Radio Active

iTrader: (2)

bump (lol)

To some extent I agree with you that it is a preference thing. However, I do believe that the balance is fundamentally, badly, wrong at the moment between time trialing for qualifying and heads-up racing. I have lost count of the number of times that I've had spectators ask me during qualifying "When do they start racing?"

One criticism of the RROC format is that it's not 100% identical for each competitor, as in when A's on pole it might be B alongside and C last on the grid, but when it's D's turn to be on pole then C starts on P2, and C is 4th on the grid or something. This is true, but I'm more than happy to have these minor differences, so long as everyone starts in as fair as possible a range of grid spots, and who runs in which heat is spread as much as can be done.

This can be counter-acted a little by using a format similar to what BMX racing does. They have one time trial right at the beginning to seed competitors and there after it is a series for sprint races.

With the IFMAR Called set-up it's not 100% identical for each competitor either. Someone will always be starting first and someone at the back in the first run will have to work their way though. People complain when the computer glitches and they get called in the wrong order, which is just anal if you ask me. A distributed grid system would discourage the kind of thinking that leads to those types of complaints.

The other issue with the current system is no matter how hard you try track conditions still vary between heats. Mixing up competitors after each heat and having them score points 10 to 1 in each race would actually solve that issue. The difference one heat to another wouldn't matter, and you'd be able to let the track evolve more for more of a traditional offroad racing experience.

BlueGlowBoy

iTrader: (2)

I think it's a Metric vs. Standard thing....

DaveG28

iTrader: (65)

Just to throw this out there, I did some "Players" events in the UK, where initially you did 2 rounds of qualies but instead of it being the 5 minute time, they used best 3 laps together...I really liked it as an element of a meeting, more like full size racing!