Help me come up with fun race formats
 

Hello, I have been asked by our track owners to come up with some interesting race formats. It is an indoor clay off-road track. Electric only. We, like everyone else runs the 2-3 qualifiers and a main as normal. We would like to do something different on occasion, something fun.

I have one idea, as our track is near Indianapolis, IN, around Memorial day, I am going to run a race where mains are 500 seconds (like the Indy 500, get it) and qualifying will be everyone runs the 1st qualifier. If you are happy with your time, you don't run the 2nd qual, if you run the 2nd qual, you drop your 1st qual time and have to go with whatever you get on the 2nd qual. Its similar to what they do for Indy qualifying.

I have thought of team races where you have a team of each class, so one 2wd buggy, one 4wd buggy, one SCT and one Mini Truggy. We also thought of a relay race where you run until you tag out and someone else starts - but not sure how to do that in our LiveTime software.

Does anyone else have some ideas for a fun race format and how you do it?

TIA!

black light racing. used to love watching it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fq8OS00o9o

buggy VS stadium truck. i can't remember the class or race/event, but i remember a (full scale) short course race they run 2wd VS 4wd with the 2wd getting a handicap via starting X amount of time before the 4wd's start. make the quicker buggy's chase the trucks. this could also be done with 2wd and 4wd buggies.

some kind of vintage class could be fun. limit entry to cars over 20 years old. you could even take it one step further and designate it by time period. for example 1997 through 2003 vehicles only. or 80's night, could even encourage people to dress the part to earn bonus points that earn them better qualifying positions.

monster trucks. have some kind of 1/10 scale monster truck class.

some kind of endurance race with a 3 person team. an hour long main where all 3 team members have to drive. they'll have to make pit stops cause the battery won't last that long. allow tire changes and chassis repairs as well.

something as simple as a mini race could be fun. running 1/18 scale or whatever on a 1/10 track is actually amusing.

qualify running the track one direction and run the mains the opposite direction.

Honestly, heads up raced for qualifying were more fun than anything.

2 more ideas.
invert the qualifying order.
motocross style starts.

When you ran the endurance races, did that seem to be hard on the motors? That was one concern expressed to me when I brought that up. That was when we started thinking about relay style where you run different cars but for the same team. I'm just not sure how to do that in LiveTime

blacklight/ dark racing is fun, my track does that for a Halloween event, people put glow sticks, LED strips and light bars on the cars, add-in in the smoke machine makes it even more fun as to see the cars come blasting out of fog banks.. racing in costume is encouraged with wacky no costume penalties like facing the wrong way start

we just did a 3h endurance race requiring a driver change at all battery pit stops, there was a "rain storm" in one corner part way thru with a small section of track being wetted during the race as a surprise
currently we have an oval configuration with a "catchall" class allowing basically anything to run and a few people have brought out touring cars

The inverted starts could be fun. The Mx style starts could be fun for spectators! We have a hard enough time getting a clean start from a staggered grid!!

https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.rct...52dd6066b8.png
2 choices with motocross starts. Go as fast as possible. Or wait and let them crash. Inverted starts last only a lap or two. Now if driver 1 is a full lap or more on the field, could do a delayed start. And let chase. We done pit stop for on road. Have to pull in a lane, wait 15-20 seconds. But overall it has zero effect on how races ended up

iv never actually raced an endurance race. iv just seen where others have. it seems like a cool premise. i would imagine cars would have to be geared to handle the longer run times.

King of the hill? No turn marshals, No reverse, but you can get bumped back into the race.

Done a few of those. Usually it’s after all the regular races. Actually won one. But man, it’s hard to just watch you vehicle sit upside down knowing that someone is probably gonna hit it at full speed.

We do a 10hr Enduro locally. Think every 1hr we did driver change. Mandatory 15min pits to swap batterys and whatever else u can do. Lol.
good time. Long day. Lol.
D

Think we do 4 person teams

The 10 Hour Enduro is teams of 5. Team Captains are appointed, and have a meeting to pick teams once the signup sheet is full. They intentionally make the teams even.
Rules:
1 car, 2wd buggy, 13.5 motor, blinky ESC
pit stops every 15 minutes. it is a called out "pit now" so everyone pits at the same time. you don't have to change the battery, but you do have to take the car off the track (touch the chassis to your assigned spot on the wall.)
every hour drivers and marshals switch
in each 5 hour period you will drive for an hour and marshal for an hour. Rotation is determined prior to the race starting.

you can take your car off at any point for repairs and tire changes, but if your on the track you have to participate in the pit stops
Driver and Marshal have to stay in place for their assigned hour. If the car breaks the other 3 have to fix it.

The things that make it fun and interesting is the 1 car, and the relatively even teams.

We’ve done an exhibition race at the end of the club race where you race the course in the reverse orientation, no turn marshals, and you have to marshal your own car. Yes, people are running up and down the drivers stand marshaling their own cars. Super fun to watch and a good fun way to end the day.

How do the teams work? How do you do it in the timing and scoring software?

Thanks!

we did our 3h oval enduro on a single car, swapping any part was allowed though. youd have to gear the car more conservatively to keep temps down. no one that did ours ended up smoking a motor during the race, it was all on basically spec slash setups (XL5, 2s, 7600mah max, unaltered 12t titan, traxxas/rpm parts allowed except (272r or other aftermarket transmission) wheel offsets had to be the same per axle, but not per side, so no staggering allowed

Probably not going to be popular, but you could have a race consisting of two person teams. One person is blind folded and is operating the transmitter. The second person tells them when to turn, brake, accelerate, etc.

Ha, that would be good for the hobby shop's sales!!

We used to have rocket racing with no quals. Essentially triple mains with top 2 rounds combined and tie breaker to fastest run. 3 rows of cars rotating each round so everyone gets a chance to start on the first row once so if 6 racers in the heat, then 2 cars per row, if 12 racers then 4 cars per row.

Another thing our club did was a "consistency series" so where you finished didn't matter, it was scored by your consistency and this actually promoted squeaky clean driving!

Hmm, the consistency series sounds cool. Did you just score based on the consistency number in LiveTime? So, if you had 96.73 in consistency, that was your score?

Yup, and the tie breaker was whoever finished first, there were times where we had several ties and I once won both classes while never actually winning a single race, ha!

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...e4225afb_c.jpg

Pretty much what ‘break out’ on oval is all about? You set a max lap time if you go under the lap doesn’t count, so consistency is key.

Caravan!
Crazy Dutch Caravan race (youtube.com)

During a race, the spectators get to shoot at the cars with paintball guns.

ill third black light racing
and add bikini girl turn marshals

might be more fun to give the paintball guns to the racers to shoot turn marshals when they slack off or keep them from flipping over a higher ranking car

Only if the marshalls have the ability to fire back

Adding to the enduro events, Ive participated in a few that were carpet onroad, but the premise is the same.
4 man teams, I believe it was a $200 or so buy in, with that you received a TT01 kit and a pre-painted single color body, you then have 45 min or an hour (I dont remember) to build your car as a team, once that time is up the race is starting with or without you. You may run any receiver/radio/servo, but you must run the kit silvercan motor as well as a spec 5000 battery. Batteries were only $25 and a bunch of us already had them from other classes. You may have as many of these as you'd like. (realistically you only need 2 or 3). Every team must have a marshal on track at all times, and every team member must drive for at least an hour, but other than that its open. Pitstops are open so this makes strategy key. You burn up $12 motors occasionally, and tires are completely toast at the end, but its relatively cheap at $50 a person for the event and its an awesome time. The track also provided pizza for everyone in attendance.

Maybe something to think about if there would be a budget semi-durable offroad car you could all use.

That is a cool Idea. I will look into that too!

So, I called LiveTime tech support and found out how to run a relay style race in the software. When you setup the event, in the Rounds tab, you mark 'allow multiple transponders for driver'. You set up "Team Name" as a driver and register them for the race. Then before you start that round, you have everyone on the team check in and drag all of the transponders to the team name. The first driver starts, then you when one comes off, the next can go and it gets scored under the same team name.

not sure how well it would work for off road, it's really more of an on road idea but ill throw it out there anyway just for the sake of conversation.
a class that is concourse judged, and every car is given points based on looks, "realism", creativity, etc. then you race and are awarded points based on finishing position. then the points are averaged out and the person/car with the most points wins.

Some big VTA races have a separate prize for winning concourse. I could possibly see it for SCT. But it would probably add costs. As some of these well painted bodies are $$$. And most probably would keep them for pictures/podium only. I’ve raced with a few that have “podium only” bodies in on road.

We did this Friday night. We let the software randomly set the first starting order, then the second round started in round one finishing order, then round 3 started in inverted finishing order of round 2. Everyone seemed to like it!

Glad to hear it!

I personally don't care for it because it tends to create mass mayhem in the first corner, depending on who is seeded in the row behind me, I would tend to opt to start in a "4th row" and then sift through the gaggle of cars which often would help me get into lead position on the first lap, ha!

We didn't line up side by side, for exactly the reason you said, we used our normal starting grid. We didn't do any qualifying, just let the computer set the starting order for the first round, then I rearranged the order for the other two rounds. But everyone liked it.

Thanks!

I like that variant much better, we haven't had Wed night racing in over a year so this format isn't a thing in my area anymore, but if they ever start back up with the no-qual-rocket I'll be sure to suggest your modification!