bump (lol)
Originally Posted by
jrspruitt
You know it is kind of starting to sound like the real issue here is a personal preference one, different people are looking for different things out of it, the part they enjoy. I like the qualifiers and mains, got no problem with it, suites me just fine, but other people want more race for position time. Then bump ups, some say waste of time, some say its more exciting. Sounds like its going to be a hard issue to resolve. Like if you are lucky its fair, fun, competitive, and everyone is 75% happy. The other 25% that's racing, deal with it, we're here to have fun.
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.